Free Anastasia's Chosen Career by Lois Lowry

dinner plates and followed her mother to the kitchen, still talking about Henry Peabody. What had happened to Henry Peabody that day was certainly, in Anastasia's opinion, the most interesting thing in the world.

    First of all, the gray-haired lady had followed Aunt Vera's instructions and had taken it
all off.
Henry's hair, that is. First the green butterfly barrettes were removed and dropped onto the linoleum floor.
    "Hey, watch it, will you?" Henry said. "Don't just throw a person's personal stuff on the floor."
    "Honey," Aunt Vera told her, "those butterflies are going into permanent hibernation."
    Then the old lady started in with the scissors. Not snip, snip, snip, as she had done with Helen Margaret. But whack. Whack. Whack. Huge hunks of Henry Peabody's hair dropped to the floor until in no time at all the butterflies were hidden under the pile.
    Within moments—Anastasia was watching out of the corner of her eye because watching Henry's haircut was even more interesting than watching her own in the mirror—Henry's hair was clipped back into a rough, thick halo around her head.
    She saw Henry scowl at her own reflection. "You said spectacular," Henry bellowed, "but you're not
doing
spectacular. You're doing
ugly!
"
    "Trust us, sweetie," Aunt Vera reassured her. "This is just step one." She tilted Henry's head from side to side. "This is one great-shaped head," she announced. "Take it right down to the contour," she instructed the old lady. "Let's let that contour show."
    Anastasia stared glumly at herself in the mirror. Her haircut was progressing slowly; the woman was meticulously trimming it section by section. And Anastasia could see that it was going to look okay. But Aunt Vera had pronounced Helen Margaret's ears exquisite. And now she had said "great-shaped head" about Henry.
    Anastasia wished—no, more than wished; she
yearned
—for Aunt Vera to say something in superlatives about her. They had studied superlatives in English class at school. Often a superlative ended in "est." Like "loveliest" or "grandest."
    Anastasia wished that Aunt Vera would say, looking at her, "That is the loveliest hair."
    Or sometimes a superlative began with the word "most." Like "most brilliant" or "most magnificent."
    That would have been okay, too. "You have the most magnificent hair," Aunt Vera could say, hovering around Anastasia's chair.
    But she didn't. She had run through one list of superlatives for Helen Margaret, and she was trotting out a whole new vocabulary of superlatives for Henry.
    "The most glorious head I've seen in a long time," Aunt Vera said, watching as the old lady got out a buzzing electric thing and began to zzzzzzz Henry's head.
    "You electrocute me and you die," Henry announced, but she wasn't scowling any more. She was watching herself in the mirror with a look of wonder.
    And Henry was finished, even before Anastasia's beautician snipped her way around to Anastasia's left ear. All of Henry's hair except for a soft, even covering like a black fur cap was on the floor. The third old lady appeared from nowhere with a broom and swept it into a dustpan.
    "You want to save these barrettes?" she asked.
    Henry didn't answer at first. She was staring at herself, turning her head from side to side. Her brown ears, each with a tiny gold earring, lay flat against her perfect oval head. Her cheekbones showed. Slowly she began to smile: a tiny smile at first, just twitching her lips. Then the smile became broader as if she couldn't hold it back, and finally her small, white, even teeth showed in a wide, beautiful grin.
    She glanced at the old lady holding the grubby plastic dustpan. She glanced at the four green butterflies lying on the mound of hair.
    "Toss em," Henry said with disdain.

    "I was really feeling kind of sorry for myself," Anastasia explained to her mother after she described Henry's haircut, "because even though I could see my hair was going to look good, and / was going to look good—and older,