Double Take (4 page)

Anna held up her hands. “I have no phone. Our community is not as liberal as some. Our bishop says no good will come of all these phones.”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of phones to use in New York, Anna.” Madison winked. “I mean
Madison
.”

Anna started to giggle. “Do you think we can do this?”

“Absolutely.” Madison stood. “Back to the restroom, where our work will begin.”

As Anna followed her back to the ladies’ room, the wheels in Madison’s head began to spin. She felt certain their clothes would fit since they seemed to be almost exactly the same height and weight. The shoes could be a problem, but Madison figured there could be a way around that too. After all, there were a few shops in this town.

This whole thing felt like playing a fun new game, and somehow she just knew they could pull it off. If all went well, she might even write about this experience for her sociology term paper. Not only could it be the perfect escape from her life, it might help her grade-point average.

With the restroom door locked, and with their backs turned to each other because Anna insisted, they stripped down to their underwear. Anna drew the line there, and Madison was actually relieved—it was weird enough trading clothes, but underwear . . . well, that was downright creepy. Then, with backs still turned, they exchanged their clothes and proceeded to dress.

Madison wasn’t sure how she felt about the heavy black stockings, but the shoes fit. Although they were uglier than sin, at least they were comfortable. So was Anna’s cotton dress. The pale purple fabric felt cool against her skin. It was probably softened from washing and wearing, and it was cut so loose that it almost felt like a nightgown. The smell was odd, kind of a mixture of body odor and sunshine. Not terrible. Just different. But Madison was having difficulty fastening the funny little wrap that went on top. Finally she looped it over her shoulder, but it still hung loosely around her middle. She asked Anna if she was ready.

“I guess so.” Anna sounded dubious.

“Turn around then.”

They both turned around and immediately started to giggle. “I never wore boys’ trousers before,” Anna said. “It is very strange.”

“Those jeans look better on you than me,” Madison told her.

Anna stepped up to adjust the apron around Madison. “The apron is attached with straight pins.”

“Straight pins?” Madison frowned. “How is that possible?”

“I will show you.”

Madison watched as Anna fastened several pins.

“You need help with your cape too.”

“Cape?”

Anna pointed to the black piece of fabric draped over Madison’s shoulders. “This is your cape, and it goes like this.” She wrapped and crossed the straps around Madison’s front, then pulled them behind her. “You use these straight pins to fasten them in back.”

“More straight pins?” Madison tried to look over her shoulder to see. “That’s all that holds it on?”

“Yes. You must do it right.”

Next Madison assisted Anna with the wide Gucci belt and other accessories, except for her earrings, which she simply dropped into her purse. She looked at Anna and laughed, pointing to Anna’s head. “What about your bonnet?”

Anna touched her white bonnet. “My
kapp
?”

“Is that what you call it—a cap?”

Anna nodded. “I am supposed to wear it always when outside of the home.”

Madison frowned. “But you can’t wear it and pass for me in Manhattan.”

Anna looked stumped.

“And I can’t be you without it either,” Madison told her. “If we’re really trading lives—even just for this week—don’t we have to do this the right way? I can’t pretend to be you without your bonnet—I mean your cap.”

“But there is so much more. How will you talk like me?” Anna asked. “My community is a conservative one, and we speak mostly English.” Anna looked worried as she adjusted the bracelet on her wrist. “But Aunt Rachel and Uncle Daniel’s settlement is even more conservative. They do not use much English inside the home. Mostly they speak Pennsylvania Dutch.”

“Pennsylvania Dutch?” Madison frowned. “Is that some kind of Dutch?”

“It is a German dialect.”

“Great.” Madison nodded. “I’m third-year German.”

“Third-year German?” Anna looked confused.

“I studied German for three years in school. I spent six weeks of last summer over in Germany too. And I even know a smattering of Dutch.” Madison spoke some German, and Anna actually understood some of it. “And your speech isn’t that different from mine,” Madison said to bolster Anna’s confidence.

“Thank you. It is from reading English novels. I practice speaking it inside my head sometimes.”

“We can do this, Anna,” Madison urged her. “And if we do it right, you might not just have a fun break, but you might find your boyfriend.” Okay, Madison knew that was ridiculous, but Anna didn’t have to know that.

Anna reached up to her white cap, slowly removed it, and handed it to Madison. “I am you . . . you are me.”

As Madison stood in front of the mirror, allowing Anna to comb and flatten her long hair—which was almost exactly the same length as Anna’s—part it in the middle, and tightly pin it up, she wondered what on earth she was doing. Anna showed her how to wear the cap, positioning it just so on the crown of her head, pinning it securely, and letting the strings hang loose on the sides.

Madison leaned forward and stared at her image. She was someone else. While that was oddly appealing, she still felt uneasy. What if this was a mistake?

Anna could not believe she had agreed to this strange idea. In fact, as Madison did something with her hair, making it look fluffy like an Englisher girl, Anna reassured herself that this was only a game. A way to pass the time. They would play this odd game for a few hours, then exchange clothes again and go their separate ways.

“Madison,” she said as Madison was showing her how to put on makeup, “what if I decide I cannot do this?”

Madison shrugged. “Hey, I can’t force you to do it if you don’t want to.”

“So, if I cannot do this, you will understand?”

“Sure.” Madison stepped back to study Anna’s face. “Perfect.” She smiled. “I’ll understand. Really, I mostly offered this for your sake. I thought you’d appreciate the chance to visit New York and maybe find your boyfriend.” She put the makeup back into the orange purse, snapped it closed, and handed it to Anna. “Because I could visit a farm if I wanted to. It sounds like your life is a lot more limited.”

Anna nodded. That was true enough. Still, she was unsure.

“Now let’s practice walking around town like this,” Madison suggested. “We’ll just see how it feels.”

“And we’ll see if I can keep from falling over in these high heels.” Anna giggled as she looked down at the brown suede boots. She felt like the characters in some of her books. She often thought like them, but after just this short time spent with Madison, she felt she was starting to talk like them too.

“I have an idea,” Madison said. “To make this realistic, we’ll go different directions. You walk around town like you’re me, and I’ll walk around like I’m you. Then we’ll meet back.”

Anna felt nervous. Was she foolish to agree to this? What if Madison was tricking her? What if someone from her community came to town and saw her?

“Don’t worry.” Madison pointed to the purse hooked over Anna’s arm. “You’ve got my money and credit cards and car keys and phone and everything. So you know I can’t ditch you here or anything like that.”

Anna picked up the duffel bag with her clothes and things and handed it to Madison. “Now you have my things, not that they will get you anywhere.”

“So you want to try this?” Madison asked.

Anna giggled. “I think so.”

“Let’s meet at the café down the street for lunch, okay? At one.”

“One o’clock.” Anna turned to go.

“Hey, can I have a few dollars first?” Madison held out her hand. “In case I need a soda or something.”

Anna handed the purse back to her. Madison opened a wallet and extracted a twenty-dollar bill, slipped it into the pocket of Anna’s white apron, and grinned. “Have fun,
Madison
!”

“You too,
Anna
.” Anna laughed nervously as they exited the bathroom and the coffee shop, turning to go in opposite directions. As Anna walked through town, she kept expecting people to stare at her as if they knew she was an imposter. But other than a few smiles and hellos, no one seemed to notice.

The more Anna walked, the more she started to relax. Even the shoes started to feel somewhat normal. Maybe she could do this. But was it wrong?

Of course it was. She was no fool. She knew it was wrong. But wasn’t it also wrong for Jacob’s parents to send him away as they had? And wasn’t it wrong for Anna’s parents to send her to Aunt Rachel’s to work like a slave—for more than a month? What if she returned to discover they were intent on matching her with Aaron Zook? Didn’t Anna deserve a short break? What would it really hurt? Plus Madison seemed so eager to sample “the simple life.” Why not allow her this?

Anna paused in front of a small clothing shop called Lulu’s. She had glanced in the windows before, often wishing she could sneak in unobserved and just look around the colorful racks of clothes. Today she could. So she did.

“Can I help you?” a woman with orange hair asked cheerfully.

“Oh, no.” Anna glanced over her shoulder. “I want to only look.”

The woman nodded. “Sure, just let me know if you’d like to try anything.”

Anna wondered what that meant—to try anything—but hoping to play the convincing role of a normal Englisher girl, she slowly strolled around the racks and shelves and simply looked at all the different kinds of garments. So many colors and textures . . . so many choices. How did the English make all those decisions?

As she fingered the softest fabric she had ever felt, the orange-haired woman returned with a wide smile. “You have good taste.”

“Oh?” Anna nodded as if she agreed.

“One hundred percent silk,” the woman assured her. “From France.”

“Very pretty.” Anna held up one with tiny pink rosebuds and green leaves and vines printed on a sky-blue background.

“Let’s try it on you.” The woman took the soft fabric and draped it around Anna’s neck, then directed Anna toward a mirror on the wall. “It’s lovely with your coloring.”

Anna nodded again, just staring at the strange girl in the mirror. Really, that was not Anna. That was Madison Van Buren, the sophisticated New Yorker.

“Would you like it?” the woman asked.

“Yes.” Anna nodded firmly. “I would.”

The woman led Anna to the counter, and with trembling hands, Anna took Madison’s wallet out and opened it.

“That will be ninety-seven dollars.”

Anna blinked in surprise as the woman wrote something down on a receipt pad.

“Will that be cash or credit?” The woman looked up at Anna.

Anna stared down at the interior of the wallet, where a neat row of plastic cards glistened. She felt sure they were credit cards; she’d read about people using them to make purchases. Even so, she knew she couldn’t use one. She didn’t even know how that was done.

She looked to where she’d seen Madison remove that twenty-dollar bill. There were more bills there, but surely not nearly a hundred dollars. Even if there was, how could Anna possibly spend that much money on a flimsy piece of fabric, no matter how pretty it was? This was crazy. It wasn’t even her money. What was she doing?

Then, as if she were a marionette with someone else pulling her strings, she extracted a crisp stack of bills to discover they were all twenty-dollar bills, and there were at least ten of them.

Steadying herself, she decided this would be the test. If Madison truly wanted to trade lives—just for one week—how would she react to Anna spending money like this? If Madison threw a fit, Anna would demand that they switch back their clothes and part ways. Really, wouldn’t it be a relief?

She counted out the bills and laid them on the counter as the woman chattered away, wrapping the fabric in tissue paper and slipping it into a shiny pink bag. She gave Anna the change and thanked her. “Enjoy your scarf,” she called as a dazed Anna exited the shop.

The bag felt as light as Anna’s head as she walked down the sidewalk. Soon she began to feel a sense of excitement, a sense of adventure, and a sense of confidence—she could do this!

At one o’clock, Anna entered the café to see that Madison was already there. Still wearing Anna’s best lavender dress, she was sitting in a booth and bent over as she wrote something in a notebook. “Hey,” Anna called out, imitating how she imagined a character in one of her books might sound. “What’s up?”

Madison looked up and chuckled. “Hell-o, Anna,” she said in a slow, slightly stilted way. Was that how Anna sounded to her?
“Wie geht’s?”

“What are you doing?”

Madison nodded to the other side of the booth.
“Sitzen sie.”

Anna smiled as she sat. “Pretty good, but not quite the same.”

“That’s why I have these.” Madison held up a little paperback called
A Guide to Amish
as well as one that looked like a Pennsylvania Dutch booklet. “I’ve been doing my homework.” She pointed to the notebook.

Anna leaned across the table to see what Madison was writing.

“I’m trying to write down everything I think you’ll need to know in New York. Names, addresses, phone numbers, things like the security code to the penthouse, the doorman’s name . . . I think it’s all here.” She flipped the page to a boxy-looking drawing. “This is the floor plan to the penthouse. See, you come in this door, and my room—your room—is the second door to the left, just past the powder room.”

“What
is
a powder room?” Anna had read this in books but never quite figured it out. Was it a place where women powdered their noses? That was talked about sometimes too, but it never quite made sense.

“It’s a small bathroom with just a toilet and sink.”

Anna nodded.

“Hey, what did you get?” Madison pointed to the pink bag.

Anna suddenly felt uneasy. “A scarf.”

“Let’s see.”

Anna pulled it out and handed it to Madison, who looked it over carefully. “Wow, it’s Hermes. You have good taste, Anna.”

“It was very costly.”

Madison studied the little price tag still on it. “For Hermes? That’s actually a good buy. It must be last year’s design.” She held it up. “Still, it’s pretty.”

“You do not mind how much it cost?”

Madison laughed. “I do need to show you how the credit cards work before you run out of cash.”

While they ate lunch, they both took notes. Working fast and furiously, as if in class, they wrote down names and facts and anything they thought the other one might need during her week. Anna told Madison the most commonly used slang words, ones that might not be in the book. She spelled them out and helped Madison pronounce them correctly. She also drew a house plan, as best she could recall, of Aunt Rachel’s two-story house. “I’m not sure if the boys are all in the same bedroom.”

“How many boys?”

Anna held up her hand to count on her fingers. “Noah and Ezra are twins—they’re probably around seven years old now. Jeremiah must be four. Elizabeth is two.”

“Four kids?” Madison blinked.

“Do you want to change your mind?”

“No, I like kids.”

Anna chuckled and wondered just how much she should tell Madison. But the further along she got with this game, the more she wanted it to continue. Maybe it was selfish or stupid, but more than ever Anna wanted to go to New York.

Madison slid a piece of printed paper across the table. “This is your bus ticket into New York. It leaves at 5:10. After you get into the city, you’ll take a taxi home. I’ve written it all out for you.”

They continued filling pages of paper as they exchanged more information. Every few minutes, they gave each other what Madison called pop quizzes, until it was half past four and Anna was feeling really nervous. If she wanted to change her mind, the time was getting short. Her uncle might be here in just an hour or so. But as the minutes ticked by, Anna felt more and more certain she was going to do this.

Madison was talking quickly now, as if she too was getting concerned about the time left. “Now even though I told Garret that I didn’t plan to be around, there’s still a chance he’ll try to call me both on my cell and at home. I’ll field the calls on my Blackberry, but you might have to deal with him in Manhattan, and I’ll warn you he is a persistent guy.”

Anna nodded. She knew Garret Stuart was the boyfriend who’d been caught with another girl named Constance Westfall, and that Madison’s BFF had caught them in a photo together and that Madison was fed up.

“If he does call, feel free to dump him.”

“Dump him?” Anna frowned.

“Yes. Tell him you don’t want to see him. It’s fine. I’ll deal with him later.”

“Right.” Anna made note of the term
dump him
.

“Naturally, you’ll be dependent on taxis to get around town since you don’t drive, but that’s what I usually do in the city anyway.” Madison explained how she’d paid to park her car in a lot in town for the week. “They looked at me a little funny.” She chuckled. “I guess they don’t get many Amish girls driving cars in these parts. Anyway, I’ll just pick it up when we switch our lives back a week from today.”

“That’s right.” Anna felt slightly panicked when she realized they would have to meet and go through this whole exchange again. “How are we going to do—” Her words were stopped by the sound of a man’s voice calling out her name.

“Anna Fisher?”

“Oh, oh.” Madison’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t look now, but a man in a straw hat and a brownish-gray beard just walked into the café. He’s looking directly at me.”

“Tall, thin man?” Anna whispered. “Narrow face?”

“Uncle Daniel,” Madison exclaimed with a wave.
“Wie geht’s?”

Anna’s heart pounded against her chest as she sat frozen in the booth. Her back was to her uncle, and although he couldn’t see her, she felt certain he would figure this out. Then she would be in serious trouble.

Her uncle sounded impatient as he informed her that it was time to go, and everything in Anna said to stand up and go with him now, to stop this nonsense before it was too late. But she felt as if her blue jeans—rather, Madison’s blue jeans—had been stitched to the padded bench seat. She could not move. Even if she did move, what would he say to see her dressed like this? No, it was too late.

Madison stood, and speaking in her odd-sounding German, she assured Anna’s uncle she was coming. Nodding to Anna with a look of confidence, Madison picked up the notebook pages and stuffed them into the duffel bag. “Nice to meet you, Miss Madison.” She hooked the cloth straps of the bag over her arm and hurried off.

Anna held her breath as she listened to the jingling of the bell on the door, followed by the solid sound of the door closing. Anna knew they were on their way, that it was too late to stop this craziness. With a pounding heart, she slowly stood, watching Uncle Daniel as he strode over to his black buggy parked by the general supply store. And Madison—Anna—was right on his heels.

A fresh ripple of fear rushed through Anna. This was wrong and reckless and completely irrational. Even though she would be severely reprimanded, she should run out there, confess her bad judgment, and put an end to it. No good would come of this switch.

Feeling panicked, she hurried out the door and rushed out into the street. But it was too late. The buggy was already a block away and moving quickly.