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In the end, it’s Abbey who teaches Mallory how to drive, during the long, hot summer she turns fifteen. She and her family are up in New Hampshire for an unprecedented two weeks’ vacation, and her parents had thought it the perfect place for her to get behind the wheel for the first time, her learner’s permit fresh in her pocket. Neither of them, however, prove to be particularly efficient teachers. Mallory’s mother is too nervous at the entire prospect, and her nerves infect Mallory too, until she winds up mangling the Bartlets’ mailbox on a turn she’d been perfectly capable of making. Her father is more patient, but quietly judgemental, so that Mallory feels a sweat break across her neck when she hesitates too long at a stop sign.
“Whenever you want to exercise your right-of-way would be great,” her father remarks.
Mallory grits her teeth. “This is not working.”
So Abbey volunteers, and things go smoothly from there. Abbey’s good at being both firm and supportive at the same time, and soon Mallory is gliding down streets lined by sweeping cedar trees, changing lanes with the best of them. Mallory loves spending time with Abbey, who says words Mallory’s mother would never say and answers questions she’s too nervous to ask other adults. Most of the time, Ellie tags along in the backseat, and that’s even better. The three of them laugh together, sing along to the radio, and play the alphabet game using the same twenty billboards until they practically have them memorized.
It’s the best summer trip they’ve ever taken, counting the time Mallory’s parents took her to Paris. Liz, back home from college, spends most of her time on the phone with her friends or lifeguarding at the local pool, while Zoey is a terrible tag-along when she’s home, but busy with summer camps for most of the day. So, when they aren’t driving with Abbey, it’s just Mallory and Ellie, hiking in the woods or wading in the creek while their parents go to the theater and spend hours at wine tastings.
For most of Mallory’s life, the three Bartlet girls have been merely her parents’ friends’ children, her companions for an afternoon picnic here or an evening dinner there. Last Christmas was the first time she and Ellie had really become friends in their own right, after a night of shared insomnia, and the newness of their bond means they have a lot to discuss—people they like at their schools, people they hate, things they’re scared of, things they can’t wait to try.
There is something in Ellie that reaches out to balance something equal and opposite in Mallory: she is cool-headed where Mallory is reckless, focused where Mallory is spirited. They draw things out of each other. On walks, Ellie points Mallory to a colony of lichen growing on a tree, their heads bent together as Mallory marvels over the microscopic filaments. Later, Mallory races her up to the viewpoint at the end of the trail, and listens to Ellie gasp over how tiny the houses look from way up here, where nothing can touch them.
Soon, they’re exchanging secrets as they share a hammock in the backyard. “I think my dad wishes I were more like Lizzie,” Ellie confesses. “She took the Latin elective in school, and she always got A’s in English, and she never, ever gets nosebleeds when we have to do press events.” Ellie makes a face. “I even get them at school when they make us do presentations.”
“I puked once before a swim meet, I was so nervous,” Mallory says. “Then I placed fifth. Not even worth it.” Ellie giggles, a bubbly sound that Mallory loves.
“I think my dad drinks a lot more than he should,” Mallory tells her in return. “He isn’t—you know—he doesn’t yell or anything like that when he drinks, but he just acts sort of...empty. Like I’m not even there. It scares me.” She has never told anyone this before. Something about the fact that Ellie doesn’t live near her, and she won’t see her again for months, makes it feel easier to say. Across from her in the hammock, Ellie tilts her head in sympathy.
“That sounds awful,” she says. “Does your mom say anything about it?”
Mallory tears up a handful of grass from the ground where her fingers are trailing. “No. She just throws out the bottles before he can finish them. But he always comes back with more.”
“My mom doesn’t want my dad to run for governor again after this term, but I think he’s going to do it anyway,” says Ellie bitterly. “I hate it when they fight.”
“I wish my parents fought. Sometimes they don’t even speak to each other for days.” Mallory glances up off toward the porch, where her mother and father are seated side-by-side, laughing with Jed and Abbey. “This is the best they’ve been together in months.”
“Maybe that’s a good sign.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Ellie pulls up her own handful of grass and tosses it at Mallory. “Do you want to go for a drive tonight? I want you to see the lake before you leave.”
“I’m not supposed to go without a licensed driver. Liz could come with us?”
Ellie shakes her head. “She tells my parents everything, and...I want to try getting behind the wheel. Just for a bit.” Ellie won’t turn fifteen until the fall. She flashes Mallory a smile. “You can teach me how,” she says.
Mallory smiles back. She can’t help it. Despite her complaints about her dissimilarity to Liz, Ellie has a dose of the same charisma they both share with their father. The Bartlet charm, her mother calls it. “Okay,” she says.
That night, around eleven, Mallory creeps out of her guest bedroom and meets Ellie at the bottom of the stairs, where they steal the keys from her mother’s purse and climb into the car, Ellie taking the passenger seat. It’s the first time Mallory’s ever driven at night, and the darkness is absolute, pierced only by her headlights and the occasional streetlamp; she feels small in the face of it. Ellie gives her directions, and when they reach a winding side street they get out of the car and switch places.
At first Ellie is hesitant, pressing the brakes too hard and sending them both slamming back into their seats, but soon she eases up, and they make their way—slowly, carefully—down to the lakeshore. “You made this look so easy,” Ellie says, gently maneuvering a turn.
“You’re doing great,” Mallory says. “Really, I mean it.”
“I know,” says Ellie. Mallory glances over at her, and Ellie’s cheeks turn pink in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “It’s just. You always say what you think. I wish I was like that.”
“I like the way you are,” says Mallory, and, inexplicably, feels herself blushing too. They drive the rest of the way in silence, until finally Ellie pulls over and puts the car in park. “Here,” she says.
By the light of the moon, the lake glows an otherworldly silver-black. As the two of them stumble down to the edge of the water, tripping over roots and rocks, Mallory glances up and sees a blanket of stars draped over their heads, more than she has ever seen in D.C. or Chicago combined. Somewhere, a frog is croaking steadily. When they reach the lake, Ellie sits down right on the dirt and strips her shoes and socks off, and Mallory follows suit. Together, they wade into the water.
It’s shockingly cold, enough to make Mallory’s entire body shudder, but she doesn’t shriek until a slimy tendril of lakeweed wraps itself around her ankle. At first, her screaming and flailing makes Ellie follow suit, shouting, “What? What is it?” until they realize what’s happened. Then Ellie smirks at her, and Mallory splashes her in response, and soon they’re both soaked and have dissolved into helpless laughter that echoes across the lake.
Ellie has a laugh that she only ever lets out on rare occasions, when she doesn’t think anyone is listening to her too hard. It’s raucous, the opposite of everything else she projects into the world. It rings out like a bell. It splits the world open. Knee-deep in freezing water, Mallory watches her laugh and laugh, wet hair clinging to her face, and there is no one sensation she can name for why and how she realizes it. Her chest doesn’t tighten, her face doesn't flush, her breathing doesn’t change.
She just looks at Ellie, at the shape of her laughing mouth, and thinks, All right. This, now. You.
You and me.
In September of 2002, three things happen. First, Mallory breaks up with Richard Andreychuck. Second, she moves herself and all her things back to Washington. Third, she drives to Baltimore and parks her car outside Ellie Bartlet’s apartment, runs up the steps to her door, and rings the bell.
Two days before that, she’d had lunch with her mother, who, since the divorce, has been light and happy in a way that Mallory remembers only from the early years of her childhood. That same day, she had dinner with her father, who seems lighter in his own way now too, free as he is now to devote everything to the role he has always loved. Afterward, they stop by the White House so Mallory can run the greeting gauntlet. The offices come first; the residence is saved for last.
Abbey holds out her arms when she sees Mallory, and Mallory goes right into them. “You drove yourself back from New York?” Abbey asks.
“With all my things in boxes.”
“I’m so glad my lessons paid off.”
“I owe you everything,” says Mallory, and Abbey laughs.
“You’re all right, then.” She doesn’t say it like a question, which Mallory appreciates, because she’s sick to death of explaining why that’s the case. None of her friends can understand why she’d ended it with Richard, but then none of them had grown up in a house like hers. Mallory knows what it’s like to watch a relationship slowly turn from flesh and blood to thought and shadow. She knows the warning signs, and she wants more than that for herself. She thinks she’s earned it.
“If you want to get more driving in now that you’re back, I’m sure Ellie would love to see you,” says Abbey. “You two were always so close.”
It’s odd—the words send a thrill of nerves through Mallory’s body, like she’s still a teenager with a stupid teenage crush. Since the divorce, and especially since moving to New York, Mallory hasn’t seen any of the Bartlets nearly as often as she used to, a fact she’s expressed dismay about in her email exchanges with the three sisters. This, she knows, is why Abbey is suggesting a visit, not because she knows or suspects anything about how Mallory once felt about Ellie. Yet it still makes her feel like she’s been caught out somehow, even though all that is long, long over.
She clears her throat. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll call her.”
It surprises Mallory, later, that she actually does it. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Ellie, it’s just that it feels strange to do so outside of the summer or the holidays, which have been the boundary lines of their relationship for as long as she can remember. Ellie seems surprised as well, over the phone. “Of course I’d want you to visit,” she says. “But I don’t want you to take time out of your day just to come and see me.”
“It’s only an hour’s drive,” says Mallory. “But if I’d be an inconvenience to you at all—”
“I’m the one who’d be an inconvenience, making you drive—”
“Not at all,” says Mallory firmly. “If we both think so, let’s agree neither of us are, and I’ll come, okay?”
“Okay,” says Ellie. It sounds like she’s smiling when she says it, and Mallory hopes she is. “Yes. Please come.”
When Ellie opens her door, neither of them know quite what to do at first: they dance around each other like dust motes surprised by a rush of air before finally giving up and hugging tight. Ellie gives her a brief tour of the apartment, which is small but comfortable. The two agents on her detail, neither of whom Mallory knows, give her nods of acknowledgement before returning to their window posts.
“I thought I’d make you risotto,” says Ellie. “It’s the only fancy thing I can cook.”
“I’m not worth the effort,” Mallory protests.
“Don’t be silly, of course you are.”
In the harsh overhead light of Ellie’s kitchen, the dark circles beneath her eyes stand out sharply. They always seem to be getting worse, not better, every time Mallory sees her. She knows rationally that part of it is the rigors of medical school, and part is that Ellie, like Mallory, has always been a poor sleeper, but sometimes it feels like every year Ellie’s father spends in office costs Ellie one of her own. She is drained in a way she never used to be. It makes Mallory’s heart ache, physically.
Things are stilted for a few minutes, but soon they relax into discussions of Ellie’s upcoming clinical rotations and Mallory’s newest class of third graders, and by the time they’re washing their plates they’ve reached a stage of conversation that exists only between two people with a long history, made up entirely of memories and references to people and places they share. When she glances out the window, Mallory is shocked to see that the sun has already completely set. The day agents have left and the night agent has replaced them without either of them noticing.
“Oh, you’ll have to drive back in the dark now,” says Ellie. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.” The lightness that has slowly come to her face over the course of their conversation begins to flicker out. Mallory can’t bear it.
“I don’t mind,” she says. “I’ve had plenty of practice. And so have you—remember the lake?”
A smile flits across Ellie’s face. “I remember the shit we caught for that.”
Mallory is seized with an impulsive thought. “Let’s do it again,” she says. “Not the lake part, let’s just drive around, let’s go anywhere.”
“Mal, they won’t let me.”
“Your father only thinks he can order them to be your babysitters,” Mallory says. Suddenly she is desperate to get Ellie to come with her, to take her out on the most open road she can find. “You’re an adult. They can’t really stop you. They know my father, I’ll drive, they can follow. We could do it.”
“Okay,” says Ellie. “Let’s—let’s do it.”
She seems surprised that she’s said it, and before she can change her mind Mallory seizes her wrist and pulls her over to the door, scrambling for her keys. “We’re going for a drive,” she tells the night agent, a woman around their age, who hesitates for a moment, eyes flickering back and forth between Mallory and Ellie. Then she sighs.
“Stay the speed limit, and I’ll be behind you, all right?”
The streets of Baltimore are quiet this time of evening, but narrow, and as soon as she can, Mallory takes them to the freeway, letting the lights of the city turn to a blur around them. Ellie is tense at first, and keeps glancing into the rearview at the trailing black sedan, but she starts to relax when Mallory turns on the radio. They sing along, first quietly and then at the top of their lungs as the wind from the rolled-down windows sends their hair flying around their faces. At the next red light, Mallory makes a gamble, based on the friendly look of the agent from earlier. She puts the car in park.
“What are you doing?” Ellie asks her.
“Come on,” says Mallory, “Quick.”
Ellie stares at her a moment, and then a smile breaks over her face, and she moves, climbing over the center console. Mallory presses flat back against the seat to give her room, but still, for several moments they are all tangled limbs and hot breath, faces inches apart, until Mallory swings herself into the passenger seat, heart pounding in her chest. She barely has time to fasten her seatbelt before the light turns green and Ellie hits the gas, and they soar off into the night.
Ellie laughs, her secret laugh, the pealing, ringing one. Mallory feels fifteen again, her stomach squeezing tight. “Oh my god,” says Ellie. “I haven’t been able to do this in so long.”
“I figured.”
They’re silent for a while, Ellie clinging to the steering wheel as the radio continues to blare. “I missed this so much,” she says, eventually, and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. Mallory reaches over and catches it. Ellie laces their fingers together, and they stay linked like that until, eventually, they arrive back in front of Ellie’s apartment. Ellie kills the engine, but leaves the car running as she turns to face Mallory.
“Thank you, Mal,” she says quietly.
And just as before, when they were teenagers, Mallory is unable to trace the exact moment she realizes it. There is no last piece falling into place, no sudden rush of emotion. Instead, as Ellie leans toward her, it feels like the most natural thing in the world for Mallory to take her face in her hands and kiss her: there are some things, it turns out, that simply do not leave you.
They kiss until they are breathless, until the car windows are coated in fog. The gearshift keeps digging into Mallory’s ribs, so she clambers over it and lands in Ellie’s lap, where they cling together. Mallory stops caring about the time, about the agent parked behind them, about anything except Ellie’s mouth on hers. She doesn’t come back down to Earth until she leans backward and hits the horn, which trumpets loudly. They both jump.
“Right,” says Ellie, still gasping slightly, and then she laughs her beautiful laugh. Mallory reaches out to smooth some hair away from her face, and Ellie looks up at her, shy but determined. “Do you want to come back inside?” she asks.
That night, Ellie falls asleep after only twenty minutes, her head resting against Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory stays awake a little longer, watching the shadows of the leaves outside Ellie’s window sway and bend. The last time she and Ellie shared a bed was eleven years ago, the night before Mallory had gone back home for the summer. They had stayed up late talking about their parents, their hopes for the future, and fallen asleep with their heads on the same pillow. There had been a weight on Mallory’s chest then, made of all the things she wanted and knew she couldn’t have. She’d been fifteen and thought it would stay there forever.
Ellie stirs, and Mallory looks down at her, serene in sleep. You and me, she thinks.
Mallory closes her eyes, and that night she dreams of a long road stretching out before her, where all the lights are turning green.