She Never Was

She Never Was

“Is that a tattoo?” Jeff said excitedly looking at his sister Crystal’s wrist.

“What do you think?” she said, pulling her sleeve over it and quickly and looking around.

“Is it real? You are in so much trouble! Let me see it again!”

Crystal pulled her sleeve back and let Jeff look. It was a small flower, red and pink with thin black lines outlining it.

“That’s cool. How are you going to keep it a secret? You can’t wear long sleeves all the time.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know, we do have summer here. Long sleeves in ninety degrees? And I’ve never heard of a long sleeve bathing suit.”

“Oh dear! I never thought about that!”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am, it’s not real. It’s just a temporary tattoo. It’ll fade in two weeks. Mom knows all about it. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to get a real one without permission?”

“I actually was a little impressed for a minute.”

“That’s the kind of thing that impresses you?”

“Well, yeah. You’re always such a ‘follow the rules’ kind of person, you know, predictable.”

“I am?” she said, actually a bit upset. “Does everybody think that way about me?”

“I don’t know, probably,” he said, as he wandered off.

When Crystal was chosen for the first United States Mars Landing, she was asked, in an interview, how she had chosen a career in space travel in the first place.

Her answer was, that early in her life she had been called predictable, and she never wanted to be called that again. And she never was.

Stubborn and pigheaded, however, were another story.