When Pigs Fly

“You could always stop being such a stick-in-the-mud. And you could try getting rid of that pesky habit of yours called tattling. I’m sure you’d have more friends then. Oh! Or you could stop eating meat,” her sister offers in a faux helpful voice. “Although that would probably be impossible for you; what was your record? Five days? Four days?” her sister laughs. 

“Oh, shut it just this once, will you?” Alyssa grouses. She tries to ignore her sister’s awful suggestions and focus on the paper before her. New Year’s Resolutions have always been important to their family and she’s not going to let her ogre-spirited younger sister ruin it for her.

“Have you forgotten the benefits of going vegetarian? I mean, you have always had a horrible memory, but I would never have expected you to go so far as to forget even your own words!” Alyssa, of course, does know “the benefits of going vegetarian.” She has been ranting of the morality of butchering animals for months, but her attempts have never ended in much other than failure. For one thing, even knowing the detriments of meat, the fare is too delicious for her to give up without a struggle. For another, her family will never give it up—her father agrees that morality is all fine and well, but did she know how many people would like to have her ribs that night? Flawed logic, to be sure, but enough to give her hesitation aplenty. Add to that the delicious scents of her mother’s meats…well, she never stood so much as a chance. Which Jo knows perfectly well, so she’s rubbing her failure in. Not like the spoilt brat could do any better.

“You think you’re so funny.”

“Well, yes, of course. I am.”

Alyssa’s grip on her pen is slightly too tight. “Do you want me to give you a refresher on all the benefits?” The girl continues along her line of thought, ignoring her sister’s mounting impatience. “Well, first of all—”

“”Shut up!!” Alyssa growls, “Shut up or I swear I will—“

“Sis! Don’t be like that. Say, maybe you should resolve be nicer to your lovely sister.” She pouts innocently at her sister, widening her eyes and wrinkling her nose in a disarming imitation of a young baby. It always works wonders on her parents, but it never does anything but annoy Alyssa farther.

“Say, maybe you should resolve to properly follow your resolution this year,” Alyssa snaps. Jo’s disgusting smile only widens.

Alyssa’s hold on her pen is just shy of snapping it. Frickin’ ogre. Their family has a sort of tradition of creating meaningful New Year’s Resolutions and following them. It’s how Alyssa came to be the fittest in her year (working out was her Resolution three years ago) and in all honors classes (a sort of escape Resolution that she adapted once every few years to escape worst alternatives like spending more time with her spoiled, annoying sister). 

Over the years, Alyssa has always followed her Resolutions out to the last dot. Jo, on the other hand, spends more time finding loopholes in the Resolutions than actually work towards them. When Jo was five and joined them in the tradition (Alyssa was eight and already made sensible, fair Resolutions), her resolution was “Video Games.” Everyone assumed that this meant she would play less, but naturally, as she explained afterwards, it meant that she would spend more time on the computer.

The following year, her parents made them write out their Resolutions. Jo wrote, “I will play less video games” (she spelled three out of the six simple words wrong). She played for fifty-nine minutes instead of an hour every day.

When Jo was seven, the two girls were forced to write a “Proposed Method of Reaching Goal.”

And by now, with Jo fourteen and Alyssa seventeen, the Resolution, written all in their best handwriting, begins with a formal declaration of self, the “Proposed Method of Reaching My Goal,” “Proposed Punishment for Not Reaching My Goal,” “Conditions Under Which I Will Reaching My Goal,” and a dated signature.

If Alyssa doesn’t already hate Jo more than the Devil is evil, she might be tempted to be more so.

The first words Alyssa hears when she tunes into her sister’s rambling are: “In fact, I’ve already drawn up the form for you!”

Alyssa frowns up at the girl. “What?” What was the stupid girl getting up to?

Jo looks overly pleased. “Yeah! Here, let me show you…” In her haste, she trips over her feet twice before shoving a wrinkled paper into Alyssa’s hands. The handwriting is disastrous. “You just have to sign here, and I helped you write your name there already anyway…and I’ve helped you fill in the date and all…you’ll love this one, it’ll be a proper challenge and all…”

Before she even knows what she’s doing, Alyssa obediently signs on the spot that Jo’s enthusiastic finger is stabbing. Once she lifts her pen from the last curl, Jo shrieks in delight and laughter. “Great! Oh, sis, I do love you…”

Alyssa frowns. “What did I just sign?”

Jo’s lips turn down ever so slightly. “You mean you didn’t hear? Well, that’s fine, just read it.”

Alyssa narrows her eyes and scans the long-winded sentences scrawled across the page. Many of the letters are utterly indiscernible through the untidy handwriting and blotting that the words went through, but after rereading it twice, she thought she understood the general meaning of the page. And she is not happy. “What did you do, Jo!?”

“I should think that it’s clear—”

“I am not spending this year’s Resolution on promising to ENSLAVE myself to your whims, you utter prat! This is utterly stupid. You expect me to agree to this?” She rolls the paper into a stick and whacks her sister with it.

“You did sign it,” Jo reminds Alyssa, her smile trembling slightly in the face of her older sister’s wrath. “You have to follow through with it now.”

Alyssa face twists further with more anger. “You—you’re—mad!” Because the fact is, her idiot sister is right. She has to do it. Stupid tradition. “I am never doing this. Not ever. Not even if pigs fly.”

She blinks. Then she unrolls her paper and scrawls under the conditions: “CONDITION: WHEN PIGS FLY.”

A week later, Alyssa thinks she’d gotten past the Resolutions issue scot-free. She’s still incredibly angry with Jo, but at least she won’t have to slave the year away. That is when the Devil strikes. She’d been out of her room for all of ten minutes, so one can easily imagine her surprise when, on returning, she finds a dozen toy pigs with flapping white wings hanging from her ceiling. “THOSE AREN’T REAL PIGS, JO!”

Five days later, Jo comes home in a pig costume and announces that the wind carried her five meters in the air. Alyssa refuses to acknowledge her sister.

Another week passes and finds the jolly family on a plane, headed for a holiday in Hawaii. Halfway over the sea, Jo pulls open her carry-on, digs out a guinea pig, and announces that her friend Amy’s pig is flying.

Their parents finally step in.

Alyssa is told that it was her own fault for signing the paper before reading it. She is, however, allowed to create a new Resolution in a few weeks time, on the Lunar New Year.

Jo is punished for being crafty and mean, her allowance removed and all gaming time zeroed.

Jo is delighted at finally getting what she wanted.

Alyssa may soon hate her parents.