The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  The biggest surprise: My mother was on the side of the football moms. Imagine my mother, on the side of the football moms?

  I heard her talking on the phone one night to a friend. “Cheer saved Shade’s life. I know that sounds bizarre after everything that happened. But it gave her something to live for, something to work toward.”

  In the end, they decided not to disband the team. It made no sense to punish future cheerleaders for what had happened in the past.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I start going to therapy in January, after Jadis leaves for school. When I tell the therapist I feel numb, she says you don’t feel trauma until years later sometimes. So we talk about boundaries with friendships. What it means not to bleed into other people. Or for them to bleed into you. I tell her I don’t know what that means. That I’m desperate to learn.

  I tell her I still think I’m going to see Chloe Orbach, somewhere on the street, or around the corner in school. She said eventually, that goes away. I don’t know if I want it to.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Jadis sends me letters from Vermont. They have her signature doodles all over them and look just like her stick and pokes, but on paper. She says writing letters is healthier than texting. Not as much instant gratification. She says that Emma’s going to visit her in February, but that it’s a long way away. She doesn’t ask me to come.

  Jadis writes that she’s working with an art therapist to channel that yearning she has to draw on her skin. She says it’s an urge that’s hard to escape. But she’s working on it.

  It’ll never be the same between us again. We used to blend into each other not too long ago. Those pinkies twisted on my arm, a forever reminder. But there’s a clear delineation now. Good luck at cheer, she writes in one letter, and there’s a sketch of a cheerleader, three bases lifting her in the air, her arms out in a V.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  That night after I get the sketch, I dream that Jadis and Chloe Orbach are one person, morphing together, the two of them in a haze around a lake. I’m in the center of the lake, and they’re still pulling me toward each of them. But I stay strong in the middle, not going either way. On someone’s shoulders, above the water, my feet firmly planted. Then the shoulders become a rock, a boulder, and I’m standing there alone, without the tugging, completely balanced. There’s a reflection below me. I see myself for the first time above it all.

  Chapter

  37

  Keke and Gretchen are the new co-captains. It’s their last year, and it’s the start of basketball season. I smile thinking of Chloe Orbach and how she hijacked the captain’s spot, that she wrestled it away from two seniors just with pure determination. But that was the power of Chloe Orbach. She could convince you of anything.

  The bases are the heart of the team, Coach says when she makes the announcement. And I think about Chloe Schmidt, how someone like her could have been the heart of our team. How dangerous she was.

  Everyone talks about whether Chloe Clarke is going to come back. That her mother is homeschooling her. That she got rid of her phone. No contact with the outside world. No way to get in touch with her. Zoey said she saw her running one day, or maybe it was someone else.

  I didn’t think the girls would want me on the team after everything that happened.

  “We’ve survived so much together,” Zoey says, her big weepy eyes. “Of course we want you.”

  It sounds so selfish, but I forget that they suffered too. I forget how this all affected them. They had their own experiences with the Three Chloes. They had their own brushes with the glow of Chloe Orbach. Everyone felt her loss, all those freshman conspiracy theories and how they dug into our souls, how she’d come skipping into practice with that manic energy or dancing with the band on the sidelines between cheers. We all hurt.

  Over winter break we worked on some more complicated stunts, one where I would back handspring into their arms, they’d lift me up, and I’d spin. The technical word is back handspring full around. Gretch is my new main base and poor, sweet Gretch. First thing I did was kick her in the head. Everyone stood there with hands covering their mouths waiting for a Chloe Schmidt–like blowup.

  But Gretch was completely calm. Nodded her head. Brushed herself off.

  “Let’s run it again.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  My mother decides after the New Year that she’s not going to have parties for a little while. That she needs to reassess her life and mine. That too many adults have influenced me in the wrong way, and she knows it’s not great. She doesn’t want to travel either, because she thinks I’ve been through a lot and she doesn’t want me to be alone. Too much going on with all these girls and so much sadness. She wants to be around if I need her.

  She won’t budge on coming to one of my games. She can’t bear to watch if I crash to the ground.

  “I was thinking,” she says, blushing, one night over ice cream sodas, “that maybe you could give me one of those stick and pokes.” She rubs the edge of her wrist and smiles. “Maybe a little heart right here.”

  My whole face erupts, and I can’t even look at her. I burst into laughter.

  “What?” she says, defensive. “I’m too old to get a tattoo?”

  “No, it’s cute,” I say, a certain calm over me. “It’s really cute.”

  “Maybe you can get one too. Then we can both have a matching heart.”

  “To symbolize our love?” I say, snarky. But I think she means it.

  “Yeah,” she says, and takes a big slurping sip out of her ice cream soda. A little drips down the edge of her mouth.

  And I think that would be nice. That would be really nice.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Basketball season has a different feel than football season. For one, there’s no football moms with their little bullhorns and their pom-poms. Basketball moms don’t wear BASKETBALL MOM sweatshirts. Basketball moms come to the game on their way home from work. They run into the gym, frazzled, just off the train with their leather tote bags and their trench coats and their big chunky glasses. They’re always sitting behind us because that’s the only place there’s room in the stands when you’re late.

  Almost every game so far, I’ve heard a basketball mom taking a work call, saying, “I’m at my son’s game. Let me get back to you?”

  We roll out the mat during halftime, but there’s not a lot of give to it. If I fall, I’m falling hard. These death-defying feats that we make look easy. One slip and I could crack my head open right there in front of all these kids. Teachers. Parents.

  During halftime, after the pep band plays from the wooden bleachers, while the kids run in and out of the gym to the concession stand, with the mothers back on their calls to their clients or with their assistants, we cheer. The basketball spectators aren’t as focused as they were during football games, and I’m grateful for it. We have room to be sloppier.

  Zoey and Olivia double back handspring and then clap their way next to us. We try the new stunt for the first time. I back handspring and Gretch, Keke, and Olivia catch my legs, then lift me so that I can propel up above them, spin, and face forward again. I slide right into that scorpion, then a lib with one arm in the air.

  Next to us, Sasha and Pri elevate Zoey, so that when I bend my right leg, Zoey can catch it, just below me, in her hand. Kaitlyn breezes in front of us with a double back handspring tuck.

  It’s our pyramid. It’s lopsided and lanky, but it’s ours. We get a slow clap from maybe nine people.

  Gretchen counts, and on two, it’s time for my double down. I fly up just enough to spin myself around, once, then twice, feeling the air across my face, my body so tight and held together, tight and hollow, me alone up there in the revolution, flying, flying, until I land in their arms like a baby.

&nb
sp; At least that’s what it looks like from the outside. My solid landing. Their forearms crashing against my ribs. The way they grunt when I thud into them, when they lift me high above.

  We’re not babies. We’re not sweet.

  We’re nothing like you think we are.

  And I’ve never felt more like myself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It’s May 2021 as I write this, and most of all, I’m grateful to be alive. I’m grateful that my family is healthy and safe. This book was written deep in a pandemic, and if it feels like the world in this book is crumbling for these characters, that’s because it was written and edited during the isolation, desolation, and fear we all experienced between 2020 and 2021.

  I’d like to thank my editor, Julie Rosenberg, whose college cheer background made me look like a cheer pro. Julie, you made sure the cheer stunts in this book were on point, and I can’t thank you enough for your edits and for getting me to drill down to what this book was really about: friendship. Thanks also to Emily Sylvan Kim for your tireless enthusiasm and guidance no matter how many times I call you in a panic. You are a friend, you are wise, and you are my saving grace.

  The entire Razorbill and Penguin Teen team: thank you for your attention to detail and your razor-sharp focus on The Falling Girls. Casey McIntyre, Simone Roberts-Payne, Laura Blackwell, Krista Ahlberg, Felicity Vallence, Christina Colangelo, Tessa Meischeid, Bri Lockhart, Lyana Salcedo, Briana Wagner, James Akinaka, and Shannon Spann. To Sarah Maxwell for the most cryptic, stunning cover, which captured my girls in the most haunting way. To Samira Iravani for your beautiful design and, as always, for washing my book in pink. At MBC, my incredibly talented and ego-boosting publicist Megan Beatie.

  I want to thank all of the cheerleaders out there: the elite leagues, the high school squads, the rec squads, the kids on the sidelines, and every single one of you who uploaded performances, practices, and instructional videos to YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram accounts. Special shout-out to the Instagram account Official Black Girls Cheer, which is one of my favorites. Though I was extremely lucky that my editor happened to be a college cheerleader, I studied y’all for this book!

  Cheerleading has gotten much attention for its dangerous nature, which is something I touch on in the book. The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR) found that the number of severe cheerleading injuries was second only to football injuries. While cheerleading has worked on lowering their concussion rates in recent years, concussions still make up 31 percent of injuries, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Watch just one episode of Netflix’s Cheer and you’ll be awestruck by the athletic and the no exaggeration—death-defying stunts that the squad members perform.

  It leads me to the commonly asked question: Why isn’t cheerleading recognized as a sport by the NCAA or by US federal Title IX guidelines? With that said, there was a forward movement this past July when the first time in history, the International Olympic Committee recognized cheerleading as a sport. Title IX protections require all participants be treated equally and prohibits gender-based discrimination in sports.

  Simply put: cheer is not taken as seriously as other sports because of societal structure and feminine tropes. Case in point: in January of this year, a member of the Northwestern cheerleading team filed a lawsuit against the university claiming she had been “groped, harassed and lifted” without her permission by intoxicated fans during university events. Yet she was still encouraged to mingle with potential donors for the university. The New York Times reported that after she and squad members detailed this harassment to the deputy athletic director, they were met with this response: “What did you expect as cheerleaders?”

  Sexism and sexual harassment aren’t the only problems in cheer; racism is as well. Erika Carter, who was a member of that same Northwestern team from 2016 to 2018, said that the coach threatened to cut Black cheerleaders from the team if they wore their hair naturally, The Times reported. Another offense: white cheerleaders were elevated above the Black cheerleaders so they could be the “face” of the team.

  In a blog post for NYU’s Cooper Squared, Cheyenne Leitch also pointed out the issue of racism in cheer, stating that there are significantly fewer Black women than white women involved in the sport, a problem that dates back to the 1960s, when “Black young women were fighting for and being denied acceptance onto cheerleading teams.”

  Take a look at Bring It On, the most iconic of all cheer movies, which was released in 2000, and tackled cultural appropriation long before it was a widely recognized issue. The main premise of the movie is that the white team, the San Diego Rancho Carne Toros, steals cheers from the Black team, the East Compton Clovers. The beauty of Bring It On is its political message, yes, but also how it focuses on the cheerleaders’ skills and performances rather than on sexist tropes.

  I was a JV cheerleader in high school. Though my skills were limited to some tumbling and splits, I appreciated the stamina and practice that goes into sideline cheer. I had some basic gymnastic skills, and despite everyone around me being shocked that I was interested, I found myself drawn to the athleticism of cheer. Like Shade, I didn’t quite fit in. And unlike Shade, I was a little too rebellious to fully commit. I was shy, I lacked confidence, I was depressed, I didn’t like smiling, and I smoked too many cigarettes.

  For The Falling Girls, I wanted to do something different: I wanted to dive into the unabashed commitment and determination of these girls. Girls who took chances with their bodies, who dedicated their energy to the squad and bonded together from that determination.

  While this book is about cheer, it was also loosely inspired by the murder of West Virginia teen Skylar Neese, who was only sixteen years old when her two best friends killed her. Anything I read about Skylar’s death begged the same question: What would make two teenagers kill their best friend? When the police asked one of the killers why she did it, she answered: “We just didn’t like her.” For research, I’m indebted to the book Pretty Little Killers by Daleen Berry and Geoffrey C. Fuller as well as the Elle article “Trial by Twitter” by Holly Millea.

  Like most women, I’ve had my share of friendship breakups. And yes, every teenage girl endures friendship battle scars. It’s probably why I identified with the dark comedy Heathers, which came out when I was a senior in high school. I dug into that Heathers-inspired rage while writing The Falling Girls. Shade and Jadis are imperfect and messy, and I ache equally for both of them. I hope you know that you’re not alone if you feel that you’ve grown apart from your best friend, or if she’s grown apart from you. My mother always told me that friendships have hills and valleys and can often go through phases; while I didn’t want to believe her at the time, she was absolutely right. You can come through the other side of a friendship breakup, with pain—yes, there is going to be lingering pain—but you can also find forgiveness and maybe understanding. And by that I mean understanding yourself.

  I’m so thankful to have friends who support me through all of this, who talk me up, who love me up and lift me up. Thank you to my readers, helping me sift through the muck: Melissa Adler, Jessica Goodman, Sara Kaye, and Jodi Brooks. Thank you to all of the bookstagrammers, bloggers, vloggers, readers, librarians, authors, and independent booksellers who read and promoted and supported my debut, Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf, and got me here. Thank you, Kathleen Glasgow, Courtney Summers, and Amber Smith for your early and unwavering support.

  To my humongous family, all the Krischers and all the Adlers, for your love, your support, and your shoulders to cry on. My children, Jake, and Elke, who I love and cherish—my life is nothing without you both. Lastly, I want to thank my husband, Andy. We held our family together after this dark year. I love you. Thank you for always making me laugh.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hayley Krischer is a writer and journalist. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she covers
women, teenage girls, celebrities, and cultural trends. Her work has also appeared in Marie Claire,The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and more. Hayley is also the author of Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf. She lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with her husband, two kids, one dog, and three cats.

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