Double Take Read Free Page A

teenager she wasn’t even subject to the rules. According to the bishop, Anna needed to discover for herself whether or not she wanted to be part of this community. If so, she needed to be baptized. In the meantime, no one seemed to really care what she was doing. Call it rumspringa or just plain indifference, but Anna felt caught in the middle, and there was much she did not understand. Yet she kept most questions to herself.
    Now as Anna hung the morning wash, she felt unusually restless, and as she looked down the road toward the Glick farm, she felt exceedingly sad. Anna’s heart ached whenever she thought about Jacob Glick. The two of them had been best friends since childhood. As they entered adolescence, Jacob had become the love of Anna’s life, and everyone in the community seemed certain the two would marry.
    But Jacob had always questioned everything, and not just silently. He sometimes argued with the deacon about doctrine and faith and the ever-changing rules of the Ordnung. Then last fall his attitude and actions were described as rebellious. Jacob had been nearly eighteen when his parents decided to take action. Although their community’s form of rumspringa didn’t usually include exiling a teen, when Jacob explicitly informed the bishop that he never intended to be baptized, Jacob had been allowed to leave. He’d seemed glad to go, but Anna felt it was unwise.
    “We let Jacob leave so he can return,” his father had announced at a December meeting. “As you know, the apple will fall but not roll far from the tree.”
    Anna wasn’t so sure about that. For all she knew, Jacob might never roll back to the tree. That felt wrong—and it made her begin to secretly question things even more. One of the things Anna had always loved about Jacob was his questioning mind. He was always thinking deep thoughts, searching for answers. Like she’d read in a book recently, Jacob thought “outside of the box.” And now he was living outside of the box.
    “I want to experience New York City,” he had told her last summer on one of the evenings when they’d sneaked out to meet by the irrigation pond. “I want to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. I want to walk through the Guggenheim Museum and Madame Tussauds.”
    “How do you know about all these places?” she asked.
    “My great-grandfather’s photo album,” he confessed. “He wasn’t born Amish. He was born in New York and then he went to war—World War II. I think it was hard on him. He became antiwar—I’m sure that’s why he came here to live.”
    “I did not know that.”
    “It’s an old story. My family doesn’t speak of it. But someday I will visit New York City. I know it deep inside of me.”
    As much as Anna enjoyed listening to Jacob, his dreams had sounded impossible to her. Yet it was possible he was living them out right now. She hoped he was all right, safe from danger and not starving . . . but perhaps just hungry enough to roll back to the tree. Every night before going to bed, Anna said a secret prayer for Jacob, praying he would return to his senses, return to the community—and return to her.
    In the same way Anna longed to see Jacob again, she longed for something different in her own life too. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly, but deep inside of her she desired something exciting or unusual or interesting to happen. Although she knew that was unlikely, since every day seemed to be almost the same as the one before. She knew she was supposed to practice contentment and give thanks for the goodness in her life—she was supposed to appreciate what God had given her. Sometimes she did, but not today. Perhaps it was spring in the air, or perhaps it was missing Jacob, but Anna was not simply bored and restless, she was discontented.
    Anna knew this was a time in her life to practice some independence—this era was called rumspringa , and all teens were allowed to experience some safe