A Glimpse of Color PREVIEW

Prologue

It was my old college dorm room, Sunday morning, after a heavy night of partying and drinking. Empty bottles strewn about all over the place, the stench of drying beer and alcohol wafting about, garbage littered all over the place...yeah this was college. On the torn-up couch you'll find Priya, my roommate and best friend since the first year of college lying topless trying her best to cope with the hangover from hell. It didn't help that it was right before winter break and the old radiator was cranking out enough heat to cook a fucking steak.

Priya and I were second year pharmacy students at St. John's University in Queens, NY. I was cute without the "e", pale white, dyed black hair, and wore black everything. She had that slender brown body, luscious and shiny "Pantene shampoo commercial" worthy black hair and wore everything that was the complete opposite of me. If it weren't for her being Indian, you would think that we were sisters. Any time my parents would come visit the dorm they'd bring her tons of food and gifts and treated her as if she was my sister even though I was an only child. My parents would even acknowledge her first sometimes! But that wasn't even the best part; Mom and Dad would always comment how brilliant she was, how I need to be more like Priya, how she's a star student and stays away from partying and blah blah blah...If only they knew. I had many "firsts" with her. First drink, first house party, first blunt, first bar fight, oh man, the lists goes on and on.

We shared a lot of similarities, but in terms of music we couldn't be any more different. I would have the Aiwa boombox turned to 92.3 KROCK FM blasting Korn, Slipknot, Evanescence, P.O.D., Taking Back Sunday, basically anything that required me to wear all black, studded everything, wallet chain, and an ever-growing repertoire of piercings and tattoos. Priya always turned the station to something like 100.3FM Z100. She was big on Beyonce, Ashanti, Nelly, Usher (I kid you not, we had a cardboard cutout of him), basically anything to wear midrifts, giant hoop ear rings, cute berets, and of course denim miniskirts.

College was a good time, tons of friends, lots of studying and cramming but also fun parties. No commitments and nothing to tie us down. We had our small jobs working at CVS and Eckerd (RIP), but when you can show up still hungover and no one gives a shit, it's not a true job. When I verified my first script as a pharmacist, that's when shit got real. And it got real, fast. Before we knew it, we were walking to grab our six-figure pieces of paper from the Dean and throwing our graduation caps in the air. Nineteen and careless to twenty-three and adulting.

Years ago, when I was maybe in elementary or middle school, I was doing homework and complained to my dad about how school was such a drag. He told me that when you're young, time is slow and seems endless. You feel like you have a never-ending supply of fun. But as you get older, it speeds up faster and faster and next thing you know, you're forty-five years old, have a few kids, and wondering why your back is hurting for no reason. These words, even all these years later have always stuck with me, though I'm glad I'm not forty-five yet.

That second year of college was very special and changed me in ways that only Priya was trusted to know and keep secret. Of course, in writing this, means the secret no longer lays buried, but rather blossoms as a memoir of a brief moment in time when everything synced, a glimpse of color that disappeared as soon as it came.

Every so often the stars align ever so perfectly and everything seemingly falls into place, like those certain summers that become more memorable than the others with Ocean Avenue playing in the background while a blackout overtakes all of New York City. It's been a secret I've treasured for quite some time and for a while I thought it would stay that way. I feared shame and placing my reputation on the line in publishing this story, but I couldn't have a clean conscience in letting the memory slowly slip away and fade into nothingness.