Chapter 1
New York City June, 1989:
Glitter. Rainbow colors. Bright pink colored clothing. A warm sun in a bright blue sky. A boy with red lipstick and extravagant make-up, seraphic light seemingly surrounding him. A boy with cerulean eyes in a pink button-up with a guitar and a reason to live, a reason to hope. The bright sun reflected off of her sparkling, rainbow shirt and shorts, like a multicolored fire, dancing across their faces in a hundred prismatic hues. She still didn’t know how she had ended up here. She couldn’t understand this happiness that was raised out of so much pain and heartbreak. Perhaps James Carstairs, the boy with the silver hair and bad blood, had not been as crazy as he seemed…
Glitter. Rainbow colors. Bright pink colored clothing. Warm sunlight in a bright blue sky. A beautiful boy with red lipstick and extravagant make-up, the shimmering of sparkles all in his alluringly messy dark hair. Happiness and light sparkling in the golden-brown eyes of the girl wearing rainbow and sparkles, like the stars in an Arabian night sky, the girl with inexplicable and passionate fire in her heart. His guitar. His song. His reason. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. This feeling of life, this need for life. This feeling that maybe he could live with AIDS and that perhaps death wasn’t so inevitable. This feeling of hope. He doesn’t understand how this much hope should have come from such pain and hell. It all started with a girl and a needle, he remembered…
Glitter. Rainbow colors. Bright pink colored clothing. A warm yellow sun in a bright blue sky. A radiant dirty-blonde haired boy with a guitar in a pink button-up, hope and life shining in his bright azure eyes. A stunning Arabian-Egyptian girl, all rainbows and sparkles, happiness emanating from her beautiful being and that soul of fire she had, pure and classic like Egyptian gold. He understood. He knew there was reason to live. He saw hope through this disease. He knew that he could fight it. He had to fight it. Live with it. Live with AIDS and, as hard as it might get, be happy. Death wasn’t so unavoidable. He could sit in the waiting room a little while longer. He thought about how he had found these statuesque people he now got to call his friends. Shining stars in the coldest and blackest of nights…
