“Never mind,” I told her, “it was just a question.” And I went to my room giving her no explanation, because there was no explanation to be had. I kept trying to tell myself how unimportant this was, and how ridiculous I was being, but there was a deeper truth here. Even the tiniest loose thread in the fabric of your world cannot be tolerated. Either everything works, or nothing works.

My odd headache never entirely went away, and now it reached that threshold where I noticed it again. I thought I might take some Advil, but was too focused on this loose thread. I went to my computer and did a search on stop sign images. Needless to say, they were all blue. I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. And it wasn’t just signs. Stoplights had three colors. Green, yellow, and blue—which I hadn’t noticed while driving because I must have had all green lights.

And here’s the thing that was strangest of all: the more I looked at it, the more normal it seemed. The more I considered it, the more memories I had that verified what the images were showing me. But right beside those memories were red signs and red lights—and trying to imagine them both at once made my head resonate like it does when someone squeaks a balloon. I gave up and hurled myself on my bed. I was tired, that’s all. Tired and wired from a long day. It would all make sense tomorrow. It would pass. And in the morning, I’d realize that everyone was right. Stop signs had always been blue, and I must have been seriously tweaked to think otherwise.

2

Sideways

Red is the color of blood. The color of danger. Which means, if there’s such a thing as intuition, I should have been seeing red everywhere.

I spent my lunch on Monday in the school library, looking up the history of road signs. I was obsessed now. It would have been easy to just let it go, and treat it like “one of those things,” but I’m too much of a pit bull for my own good.

The history of road signs is much more interesting than you might think. Apparently, the color blue was chosen over red for two reasons. First, because of concerns over red-green color blindness. Second, because red invokes anger in mammals. It’s the reason why matadors flash red capes in front of bulls. It doesn’t make them stop; it makes them charge. Red lights and signs, it was reasoned, would make for angry drivers. So, in 1954 the American Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices adopted blue as the universal color of “halt.” The only place I could find stop signs that were actually red was Hawaii—and only on roads that were privately owned—because by Hawaiian law, the official blue signs are allowed only on public roads.