The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  She explains to us how you would hear about a bad batch. The police would be on it. There’d be word on the street. More than one person would be dead. “Whatever happened to that girl is tragic. But it’s not connected to my stuff.”

  I’m grateful that she talked to us. That she told us the origin of the batch. She goes in the back room to get her daughter, who is adorable and pink-cheeked from her nap. She snuggles in her mother’s neck. And for a second I forget where I am. I stare at the baby—I almost want to offer to babysit.

  Except that’s not why we’re here. We’re here on business. Sunshine opens the front door for us. She doesn’t smile.

  “Don’t ever come here again.” The seriousness of her statement, the point of her stare.

  “I understand,” Jadis says, looking stunned.

  “No, I don’t think you do. If I ever see you again, even by accident—” and she cuts herself off. “We are not friends and I don’t know you.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Jadis and I are outside, and there’s a crystal hanging from the corner of the house. The porch light catches it, and it reflects a pinkish hue across the window. It reminds me of the homecoming dance, the night Chloe died.

  “Was she threatening you back there?” I say as we hustle to Jadis’s car.

  “Yeah, she was threatening me.”

  We slam the car doors, both of us jumpy. I take a few deep breaths. The most important thing is not how this woman spent her time in college concocting recipes to make Molly. We went there for answers. To prove that Jadis had nothing to do with what happened to Chloe.

  I think about what the toxicology report said: fentanyl. How did fentanyl get into Chloe Orbach’s system?

  At the dance, before we took the Molly, she didn’t seem wasted at all. Relaxed? Sure. But not sick. Not on the verge of OD’ing.

  She had to have taken the fentanyl at some point during the dance. The night projects like a movie in my mind. Chloe wearing an A-line skirt, short and glittery. She was bright like a star. Everyone in a good mood. The Three Chloes and Jadis and I go into the stall at the same time. Details tumbling around in my brain, just knocking against itself. Fentanyl’s fast acting. I can’t find a place for when the fentanyl made its way into Chloe’s system.

  “How do we trust this woman?” I say. “How do we know what she says is real?”

  “We’ve been through this! You stood there in your bra and panties, and she told you that the crown tablet was clean. With her baby in the next room. What else do you want?”

  “I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,” I plead. “Why you brought the Molly to the homecoming dance in the first place.”

  “For you,” she says, slamming her hand on the wheel now, mad at me for not seeing what is so clear to her. “Don’t you see that? I did it for you.”

  She grabs my arm, the one with the pinkies intertwined, and holds it up to my face. “This—you think this was a joke to me?”

  I wrestle my arm away. “You wanted this to go on longer than it did, didn’t you? You could have told me about Sunshine. You could have at least settled this between us.”

  And I see it now, the reason she held it all back. Because she was testing me in some sick way. She wanted to see if I’d turn against her. She wanted to see how loyal I really was. There’s a terror in her face, and she crumples into her seat.

  “What you don’t understand, my sweet little Shade, is that this all started with Chloe Orbach and that bow. You just had to give it to her, didn’t you? You had to take the only thing that was ours. They saw how much she meant to you. And then they made me a pawn.”

  “Whose pawn?” I say.

  “The other two Chloes,” she says, and gives me exaggerated air quotes. “Her best friends.”

  The way she says best friends. Like it’s an insult she can’t take back.

  Chapter

  34

  Society tells us girls are supposed to be lighthearted. We’re not supposed to want to get to the top so desperately. We’re not supposed to aspire to be better than everyone else. We’re supposed to yearn for everything to be fair. For everyone to play nice. For everyone to get their fair shot. This is supposed to come naturally to us, they say; or at least we’re supposed to make it look natural.

  Coach called us a single unit. An army. At first I wondered what she meant. Who were we fighting? And then it all made sense.

  Our bodies are our weapons.

  When we’re pushing against the ground for a higher bounce or pressing our feet into a base’s shoulders or rotating, our bodies a tight aerial miracle, we’re fighting against everything that gravity wants from us, which is to stay grounded. Everything about it is unnatural. When you’re a cheerleader—but really when you’re a flyer, a tumbler, a gymnast, a fucking trapeze artist—you’re fighting against yourself.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  On Friday I show up before practice just to hang out in the locker room. I need to see Chloe Schmidt in her element. Maybe she’ll get sloppy.

  When I walk in, they’re all gathered together squawking about something of biblical proportions.

  Keke heard that the cops are going to interview all the cheerleaders one by one.

  Chloe Clarke is stretching, her long leg up against the locker. “I already talked to the cops,” she says in a deadened tone.

  “Really? What did you tell them?” Keke says.

  “I told them the truth. The truth shall set you free,” she says, glaring at Chloe Schmidt.

  Except Chloe Schmidt doesn’t seem to hear her. She stares at herself in the mirror, smacking her lip-glossed lips and getting that stance just right.

  I’m not sure what I’m seeing here between them. I can’t connect it.

  “Just tell them what you saw,” Schmidt says to the younger girls. The Court of Chloe. “Tell them who you saw Chloe dancing with. Tell them if you saw anything strange,” she says, sounding like a drugged-up kindergarten teacher, her voice dripping in sweetness. Coaching them.

  “For instance, if you saw a person that night who you wouldn’t normally see with her, maybe someone out of the ordinary, make sure you tell the cops about that person.”

  Look at her. Prompting them to point their finger at Jadis. I will wring her neck.

  Chloe Clarke slams her locker shut and walks out, passing me on the way. “What are you standing here for?” she says to me.

  “I’m watching the show,” I say. “She’s an incredible performer. A flat-out liar.”

  I lurk in the doorway listening until Zoey sees me and squeals. My little freshman bunny, Zoey. She hops over and hugs me.

  “None of you knew her like I did,” Chloe Schmidt says, pulling the old Chloe Orbach was my best friend card trick. She sees me now, from across the room. She looks into the mirror and tightens her hair in a severe ponytail, perfectly slick. Not one hair out of place.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  When everyone heads onto the field, I sneak into the bathroom to call Jadis and have her pick me up.

  But I hear Zoey’s little voice. “Shade, can I talk to you?” Zoey says.

  She steps over to me, grimacing. She has something to tell me that she’s scared to say in front of everyone else. She leans against one of the sinks and grips the edge.

  She tells me that she made a collage of Chloe Orbach for both of the Chloes. She gave it to them while I was recovering. It was a cute collage of Chloe Orbach with pictures she took at practice, pictures online, pictures Zoey took with her instant camera.

  “Remember that day when we were at Chloe Orbach’s house and she had all of those Chloé magazine pictures? I just thought maybe her best friends would want something like that,” she says. “I’m just trying to make them feel better. That’s sort of what I do. It’s a thing I’m wo
rking on with my therapist. Not being such a people pleaser.”

  That day at Chloe Orbach’s house. How can I forget the torn-out magazine pictures, every single one with the word Chloé stamped across it? I shiver thinking about it, like it’s something I had buried and now it’s coming up through my mind, those words floating like clouds, CHLOÉ CHLOÉ CHLOÉ.

  “And did they like it?”

  “They were so floored. They loved it. Chloe Clarke cried, and I know she’s so devastated,” Zoey says. “But Chloe Schmidt. Wow. Something in her got turned on. Or turned up. She was oohing and squealing. It was the first time she was nice to me, even acknowledged me. It made me happy, you know?”

  “It sounds nice,” I say, but truthfully, it makes me cringe because I can tell it’s a setup. She’s about to break the story in two. She wouldn’t have prefaced it with a promise of secrecy otherwise.

  “You would think so, right?” Zoey says, shaky. “But then I went to the bathroom and Chloe Schmidt is sitting there on the locker room floor with the collage that I made in her lap, yanking pictures of Chloe, as in Chloe Orbach, off the page. I was shocked, of course, because, Jesus?”

  “Did you say something?” My chest filling up with dread.

  “I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? I think she thought I left. She was in a daze, like as if she was alone, not in a locker room. I don’t think anyone saw her but me, but it was so weird. Her just carefully, so hellishly ripping Chloe Orbach’s face off.”

  I shudder thinking of Chloe on the floor that night at the homecoming dance. Chloe Schmidt’s screeching voice. Chloe Clarke’s blank stare.

  “So I just watched her until she turned around and locked eyes with me. Then she said, ‘I can’t bear to look at pictures of Chloe right now.’ And then she picked up her cheer bag, shoved the collage in it with all the scraps of pictures, and left.”

  All those pictures in Chloe’s room. She wanted to be that girl in the magazines. And there was a part of her who thought she was that girl. It wasn’t the way they looked, it was the life they had. So elegant and free.

  “Shade, I didn’t know what to do. I figured she’d text me or say something to me at practice, but nothing. And the two of them, they just keep standing there like we’re against them or something.”

  “Against me and you?” I say.

  “No. All of us.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Jadis is outside waiting for me. I tell her there’s something I’ve been hiding and I’m not sure why.

  “What is it?” she says, confused.

  “It’s about Chloe Schmidt.”

  “That psycho bitch? What detail could you possibly have left out about her?”

  And I think about that. Really think about it. I don’t care about Chloe Schmidt. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it to Jadis.

  “She dropped me on purpose.”

  All that anger wells up inside me. Because it’s been right there all along, and I’ve been too distracted by this bullshit idea that we were one army. That’s why I didn’t mention it.

  But I think about what Zoey told me just thirty minutes ago. That they’re against all of us. At least that’s what Chloe Schmidt thought. That anyone who came into their circle was an outsider. That anyone who came into her circle already threatened her fragile relationship with Chloe.

  She point-blank instructed the squad to tell the police if they saw Chloe Orbach dancing with someone who looked “out of the ordinary.” She might as well have handed them a script: Tell the cops you saw Chloe Orbach dancing with a girl with green hair and a black suit.

  She delivered Jadis to them on a platter.

  Jadis’s face brightens. A lightbulb inside goes off. She scrambles for her phone, swiping away at old texts until she finds what she’s looking for.

  She clicks on a video and turns it to face me.

  It’s us. The squad. The first game after Chloe Orbach’s death. The day I fell.

  “How? How did you get this?” I say, astounded.

  It was passed on to her by her loyal, Sylvia Plath–loving, all-state wrestling champ of a friend, Dave Sozo.

  Jadis told him how she felt uncomfortable going to that game. She didn’t delve into details, but Sozo understood. He had her back and filmed our routine just for her. He got it all on camera. All of it.

  “He said he knew I’d want to see it since I hadn’t missed a game.”

  She and I huddle over the phone and pause just before my fall. Up I go. Pause. Spin all the way around.

  “Pause,” I say, breathless. “Zoom in.”

  “All I see are six hands,” she says. “No one is going to be able to make sense of this.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Back at my house, we upload it to my computer and go over it step by step. I show her a video online, how the first base has her hand on the flyer’s foot the whole time.

  I zoom all the way in on Chloe Schmidt’s hand, which should be cupped under my foot. It’s fuzzy, but clear enough to see.

  It’s just not there.

  As I fall, she doesn’t even try to catch me. Her right arm lifeless, dragging. I topple down and crash into the ground.

  “I could understand why she’d hate me,” I say.

  “Yeah, but why would she do something to Chloe Orbach?” Jadis says. “Why would she want to hurt her best friend?”

  “Except they weren’t best friends anymore,” I say. “Chloe Orbach herself told me she felt like she and Schmidt were in an ‘abusive’ relationship. That they needed couples therapy. Those are the words she used. That they needed to break up.”

  “Well, that changes things,” Jadis deadpans, and if I had to read the look on her face, it would say, That could’ve been us. “So Chloe Orbach was already separating from her at the beginning of the season, and you came into the picture like a perfect storm. The new flyer, the girl who gave Chloe Orbach a bow tattoo.”

  “It was more than that,” I say. “Chloe Schmidt got lipo between her thighs, which is a big no-no in the body confidence Instagram world.”

  “So? Who cares.”

  “Well, Chloe Orbach brought it up . . . in front of me.”

  “Ohhhh,” Jadis says. “So she gave Chloe Orbach fentanyl . . . How did she get the fentanyl? And how would she have gotten Chloe Orbach to take it at the dance?”

  “Her mother has a bathroom full of pills,” I say. “Access to anything.”

  We sit in silence digesting all of this, our cheerleading murder theory.

  “Look what those bitches did to us,” Jadis says.

  Not just us. I think back to that day in the hallway with Chloe Orbach when I first wore my cheer uniform to school. She and I were strolling, our hair intertwined, me wanting to be in a tough-girl gang with her.

  “I don’t think Chloe Clarke knew anything about it,” I say. “I know she didn’t. She wouldn’t have admitted the thing about the Xanax otherwise.”

  But this doesn’t matter to Jadis. They’re all the same to her. One monster. Three heads.

  “They did everything they could to break us apart, Chloe Orbach when she was alive and those two other Chloes after she died. And now look. They succeeded. You did nothing to stop it,” she says. “And I’ll tell you why, because this is what you wanted all along. I don’t think someone could do this unless there was an opening for it. And you, my friend, you opened up the door.”

  “Because I signed up for cheer?”

  “Ironically enough, cheer has nothing to do with it.”

  But didn’t cheer have everything to do with it?

  Chapter

  35

  My alarm goes off at six in the morning. My body sweating under my heavy blankets, Jadis curled up on the edge of the bed. Her lavender hair spilling across the pillow. I shake her lig
htly, then look out the window at the orange sun popping up through the trees. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and hand the toothbrush to her. I swipe deodorant, and then she swipes. She rifles through my clothes to find something to wear. She sees my folded cheer sweater in the top drawer, pulls it out to inspect it, then shoves it back in.

  We’re coming over right now, I text Chloe Clarke.

  Who’s we?

  Chloe Clarke comes right to the door when I text her. Hair messy, still in her pajamas. “What are you doing here?”

  They were like this, Chloe and Chloe, that first day at cheer sign-ups, how one Chloe draped herself over another Chloe. It reminded me of me and Jadis, forever intertwined, unable to stop touching each other, feeding off of each other’s energy.

  “Why did you walk out of the locker room so quickly yesterday?” I say.

  “I can’t take it anymore, that’s why. Because when something is rotten, you have to walk away from it,” she says. “Is that why you’re here? Because you want to tell me that I’m a terrible person. That I contributed to killing my best friend?”

  I want to tell her everything about the fall, how I have a video of Chloe Schmidt letting go of my foot. Of the headless collage Zoey told me about. First I have to clear Jadis.

  “Jadis didn’t do it, Chloe,” I say to her. “There wasn’t any fentanyl in that Molly.”

  There’s this long stare between us like she’s trying to see through me, deep within me and what I’m trying to tell her.

  “You have so much hope, Shade. You’re such a good person, aren’t you?” she says, and I think she’s being earnest. “You’re really good, you know that? You really see the good in people.”