Utah – Perfect
She walks into a posh salon without an appointment. The girl behind the counter peers down her nose at Sara's frumpy, wrinkled outfit, but she doesn't care.
"May I help you," the posh counter girl asks, looking over her glasses.
"I'd like a hair cut," she tells her. She thinks the girl looks like a cast off from the 'Addicted to Love' video.
"Do you have an appointment?"
Sara shrugs and attempts a conciliatory smile. "I was hoping for a cancellation," she said. "But if there's nothing available, I can certainly go somewhere else."
The Robert Palmer girl smiles an icy smile. "Let me check to see if anyone can take you now," she leaves her, going in search of someone with nothing to do.
Sara leans against the counter, rolling her eyes at the shampoo displays. She takes a bottle off the shelf and examines the price tag. If she wasn't leaning against the counter, she might fall over. $25.00 seems a little high for such a small bottle of shampoo, she thinks.
Moments later the haughty counter girl comes back around the corner, with a stylist in tow. "Ethan is available to see you now," she gestures to the man with her.
An hour later, she is staring back at her reflection, in absolute shock at what she sees. Her hair is six inches shorter, with a sassy flip, short bangs, and a few reddish highlights.
Ethan is a miracle worker, she thinks. She is in awe of her own self.
She thinks she looks like a woman. A real woman, sexy and confident. Like Catherine, only not like Catherine at all.
Like herself.
She's terrified.
She walks down the quiet afternoon streets of Salt Lake City, window shopping and sipping a pineapple smoothie. Passersby look her in the eye instead of looking away. In their eyes she sees admiration with a tinge of jealousy, and she knows that she's been in their shoes before.
She can't help but grin. It's foolish, really. Feeling so beautiful after a hair cut. It's foolish and frivolous and girly.
But she thinks it's not so much the haircut as it is something else. This change is more than just physical; rather, the haircut is a physical manifestation of the change that's gone on within her. Now she feels perfect and beautiful, shiny and new, on the inside and the outside.
Perhaps she is ready to go home after all.