时间：2022-09-21 07:56:53
“Done!” said Old Jim with a satisfied smile.
“Thanks.” I reached for my wallet and was about to pay him. “No,” he shook his head, “it’s on the house.”
Old Jim was without doubt the best hair stylist I’d ever known. He designed every haircut with such artistry and delicacy that to say the miracles created by those crafty hands were “beautiful” would be an understatement. But there was one strange thing about his shop: there was no mirror in it, so customers were kept in suspense until they reached home.
I thanked him again and walked out through the door, his words lingering in myhead: “There’s magic in your new hair. Now start your journey to beauty.”
Sunlight dropped down through the overlapping foliage above my head as I walked on the pavement. I shook my head, but didn’t feel a difference. I could only vaguely feel that something was different, like a little voice that had long been suppressed and desired to be
heard.
As I walked I could see a boy walking toward me. We went to the same school, but hadn’t talked to each other much. If it weren’t for the new hair, I would’ve looked down and pretended not to see him. I had always been shy.
But at that point, I intended to test out Old Jim’s magic. I waved at him with butterflies in my stomach.
“Hey, Aaron!”
“Hey, what’s up?” he waved back, a slightly surprised smile crossing his lips.
We continued on our separate ways. It all happened so naturally, without any of the
awkwardness that usually accompanies meeting new people. I had never expected it to be so easy to surmount my shyness.
I do look better with this new hair, I thought, a smile growing on my face, when I heard someone calling out to me.
“Susan! Susan!”
I turned around. It was Jennifer, the most popular girl in the whole school.
“It really is you, Susan. You look great today!”
“Thanks. So do you.”
Jennifer was everything I wanted to be. What a sweet victory to get such a compliment from a girl like her!
We had a conversation about school and cheerleading, and parted at a crossing, where she turned left and I right. As I walked on briskly, my ears were filled with mellifluous songs from birds and rhythmic sounds of leaves dancing in the summer breeze. All of the minute details that I ignored on the way home every day now seemed infused with a life force I had never
before noticed.
At the street corner, a blind man stood playing the violin. I paused and listened attentively.
Melodies of joy and serenity flowed from under his deft fingers. I observed his facial expressions I had always considered people like him as pitiful, for they subsisted on unstable incomes, struggling every day to make ends meet to my surprise, not a hint of sorrow was displayed on his weather-beaten face. He even smiled after finishing a tricky passage. Then I was
reminded of the fact that he couldn’t see, and the only way for him to capture the different
colours of life was with his ears, hands, and violin, from which he derived such gaiety and gratitude. Deeply moved, I placed a coin quietly in the can before him.
I accelerated at the sight of home, or rather at the thought that I’d be able to see my new hair in the mirror in my room.
An hour ago, I entered Old Jim’s crestfallen, having just been rejected a role in the school play. I looked plain and boring, that’s why they didn’t want me I was convinced. “I want to be beautiful,” I said to Old Jim, tears almost dropping. Now see what his magic had done! After a twenty-minute walk home, I was fresh, alive, and radiant with joy.
I rushed upstairs, my heart pumping furiously. I couldn’t wait to see my new hair and there I stood in front of the mirror taken by surprise. My hair was bobbed, the bangs disheveled from running. In short, not much had been done, except for the addition of a tiny velvet bow over my left ear.
Judges’ Review:
The author cleverly created suspense[悬念]
at the beginning, making readers look forward to the denouement[结局]. The article was smoothly written with very little interference[干扰] from the first language. It far exceeded the judges’ expectation of a middle school student’s English writing ability.