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She wants to make a good impression.
Claudia is fidgeting the whole car ride from the airport to the farm dad’s new friend lives on. She’s never met a farmer before. When she tells dad that, he laughs like she told him a joke.
They have three daughters, mom tells them. The oldest is around her and Mallory’s age. The youngest barely two.
Claudia’s sure she’ll forget the number of daughters before they make it to the farm.
Mallory isn’t half this nervous. It’s unfair.
Her heart beats in her throat when they drive up to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and a woman with a toddler on her hip comes walking down to the car. Dad gets out and kisses the woman on both cheeks.
Introductions are made before the woman — Abbey, she calls herself — leads them to the house, going around the porch to let them inside through a backdoor.
Mallory elbows her so she stops pinching her own skin.
Two girls their age, maybe a little younger but maybe not, are helping a woman Claudia suspects is a nanny or a housekeeper in the kitchen.
“Girls, these are Mallory and Claudia McGarry,” Abbey introduces them. “My girls, Liz and Ellie. You’ve met little Zoey.”
The woman in the kitchen continues placing slices of cake on small plates while two brown-haired girls turn around to greet them.
“Elizabeth,” the oldest of them greets politely, shaking first Mallory’s and then Claudia’s hands. She holds on much too long to be normal; Elizabeth looks confused, and tells them they can call her Liz before Claudia’s even managed to give her her own name.
Elizabeth Bartlet is one of the prettiest girls she has ever seen.
She looks cool and a little mean — like she’s not that impressed with Claudia and her sister yet but is curious enough to change her mind. She has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and she smiles at them and her lipbalm glistens a little and she has a small birth mark down her cheek and when Claudia takes too long to say her own name, Elizabeth Bartlet raises her eyebrows and looks even prettier.
“Claudia Jean.”
She really wanted to make a good impression. Stammering out her own name in the hurry she’s suddenly in, was not how she meant to do it.
Mallory giggles, but when Liz does too, Mallory glares at her. Giggling at the interaction makes Claudia feel a little less embarrassed.
When she looks over at her dad and Congressman Bartlet, she’s as relieved as she is hurt that dad missed the entire thing.
He won’t have to be embarrassed for her, at least. Dad doesn’t have to know.
Dad thinks she has a crush on James Dean, and on the boy from her piano recitals. She doesn’t mind that he thinks that. James dean is pretty pretty.
He’s got nothing on Liz Bartlet.
The idea of mom and dad finding out about the thoughts she’s having about their new friend’s daughter while they were so nice to fly them over here makes Claudia want to cry right in the living room.
She couldn’t do that to her family. Not when they’ve been so nice.
The younger sister — she’s making such a good impression that she didn’t even remember this one’s name — hands her and Mallory a slice of cake and a glass or pear juice. Claudia sits down without saying another word. She doesn’t even remember to thank her.
She should give up on good impressions.
They have cake and the younger sister talks about her horse while Liz reminds them that in reality, her sister is quite scared of the horses. Claudia feels bad for giggling, because Liz’s sister looks embarrassed with her blush and her hair in her face.
“Her name’s Ellie,” Liz tells her when the cake’s finished and Mallory and Ellie are sitting on the floor with the baby sister. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
Claudia shakes her head. She tries to breathe even though Liz sat down closer to her than she had before. “Of course not.”
“Liar.”
“Am not.”
“Wanna see the horses?”
She does. Outside, Liz grabs her hand to drag her to the stables and Claudia is so surprised by this that she chokes on her breath and coughs so violently Liz lets go with a grimace.
She doesn’t want to see the horses anymore — she wants to wait in the car until they go home.
They spent so long with the four horses the Bartlets have, talking to them and giving them a dozen different and better names than they actually have, that Liz and Claudia are late for dinner.
Claudia learns that Liz Bartlet wishes her dad wasn’t a Congressman, that she’s good at coming up with horse names, that she has really soft hands when she shows Claudia how to brush a horse’s coat, and that she doesn’t like to hear not really when she asks about the adoption she’s apparently aware of.
She also learns that Liz doesn’t have to say anything to make her feel like a pervert for noticing that she’s even prettier when her shirt rides up trying to reach over the ears of a horse without losing her balance.
She feels sick. She never wants to leave. Liz doesn’t sit next to her at dinner and Claudia can barely get a bite down her throat.
She doesn’t say much on the car ride to the hotel.
“You were weird again,” Mallory informs her, when she plops her head in Claudia’s lap and wraps her arms around her waist and giggles when Claudia instinctively tries to push her off. They both burst out laughing when mom tells them to be quiet.
She wonders if Mallory would be comfortable lying in her lap if she knew how she’d looked at Liz Bartlet. She laughs louder than she has to; when Mallory offers to let her go and get up, Claudia insists she can stay right where she is.
She hopes it doesn’t sound too desperate just as much as she hopes no one can tell she’s still thinking about Liz.