Free All About Sam by Lois Lowry

head. "I wish I had a little tail like Adam."
    "Well," Anastasia said, "I think it's very weird for a three-year-old kid to have a punk haircut. When you're
big,
you can get one if you want to. Although to be honest with you, I think it would freak Mom and Dad out if you did."
    Sam grinned. He pictured his mom and dad freaking out. They would probably scream and faint. Maybe ambulances would have to come, with their sirens going. He would stand there with his punk haircut and direct the ambulance people and tell them what to do.
    "Sam, would you go downstairs, please? I have to do my homework now," Anastasia said. "I can't concentrate when you're fooling around in my room."
    "I'll go if you give me five brushes. You don't have to do a hundred."
    So Anastasia picked up her hairbrush again, brushed Sam's curls carefully five times, and patted him on his behind fondly. "You're still cute, Sam," she told him.
    "Yeah, but I have these dumb curls," Sam said glumly. He left his sister's room.

    Sam could hear his parents talking quietly downstairs. He could hear the television news in the background. If he went down to where they were, they would make him be quiet while they watched the news and talked.
    He wandered into the bathroom instead. If he stood on the closed toilet seat, he could open the medicine cabinet, and there was interesting stuff in there.
    First he took out his dad's shaving cream and pushed the button on top so that it foamed out into his hand.
    He smeared it on the bottom of his face so that he had a beard. Then he closed the medicine cabinet and leaned over so that he could see his white-bearded face in the mirror.
    Sam giggled.
    Still wearing his foam beard, he opened the cabinet again. This time he noticed his mother's perfume. He sprayed it across his chest and sniffed.
    Next, he thought he would try the hairspray. But as he reached for it, he noticed the small pair of scissors that his father used to trim his beard.
    Sam wondered if you could trim a
foam
beard. He fitted his fingers into the scissors handles and tried.
    But it didn't work very well. Part of his beard fell into the sink.
    He closed the mirrored door again and looked at himself to see if his beard was still okay, even if a piece of it had fallen off.
    But when he looked, he found himself looking more at his hair than at his beard. He found himself looking at his curls. His dumb curls.
    Very carefully he reached up with the scissors and snipped at a curl. It fell into the sink on top of the foam. Where the curl had been, there was now just a small tuft of hair. It was sticking up. Straight up.
    He stared at it. It was the beginning, he realized, of a punk haircut.
    He snipped another curl and watched it drop into the sink.
    And another.
    He began to wonder whether, when he finished the top, he would be able to figure out how to make the little tail in the back.
    He snipped again.
    ***

    Twenty minutes later, through the closed bathroom door, Sam could hear his mother's footsteps coming up the stairs. He could hear her voice.
    "Anastasia?" she was saying. "Sam? It's awfully quiet up here. What are you guys doing?"
    "Homework," Sam could hear his sister call.
    Sam put his scissors down. He looked around the bathroom. The beard foam had dissolved and was mostly gone. But there was hair everywhere.
    "Is Sam in your room?" he heard his mother ask.
    "No, he went downstairs a long time ago," Anastasia replied.
    "Sam?" his mother called.
    Sam leaned over the sink and looked once more into the mirror. Foam had dried on his chin and cheeks, and snippets of hair had dried in it, so he had a fuzzy beard. His curls were mostly gone. Here and there a curl remained, but most of his head was—well, it wasn't what he had hoped.
    He had hoped for little tufts and spikes, like Adam's hair, and a small tail in the back.
    But something had gone wrong. It was chunks. And there was a bald spot right in front. He hadn't wanted a bald spot at all.
    "Are you in the