Traffic Lights

• Sally Noonan, Grade F
• Short Story
• 2010

People always leave.

Red.

People always leave.

Amber.

Silver kept telling herself that as she stood on her balcony watching the traffic lights change from behind the house in front of her. It was the dead of night and she couldn’t sleep, so she came out to her balcony to think.

Her balcony is where Silver thought about things, it was her sacred thinking place. This time she was thinking about why people always seemed to leave her life and not show a sliver of regret. She hated it. She was a curse. ‘Course they told her it wasn’t because of her, but deep down she knew that it was.

Silver stopped thinking for a moment and moved her head to stare up at the glimmering stars in the dark sky. There was no noise, except for the sound of the cars and a barking dog or two in the distance. It seemed like the world had stopped. Her street was dead too except for the sound of the trees leaves’ rustling when a light breeze disturbed the night.

Silver watched the wind pick up speed and she new a storm was coming. Watching storms was her favorite thing to do, especially when she got to watch them form. She loved the smell in the air when it was about to rain, the lightning bolts off in the distance, and the sound of the thunder breaking the nights’ silence.

She wished she could go back to the time when there wasn’t a storm in her life. That’s all Silver wanted. She’d give anything to have that again, she would even give up watching storms if that’s what it took.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a shooting star appeared in the blackness.

Silver quickly made a wish.

Green.