All my photos of the road trip are either of food or of Nina, usually both. We ate at a lot of restaurants with cheap, slippery booths. We had an astonishing amount of Mexican food for breakfast. We twirled in dresses outside dressing rooms and put on mascara next to each other in the mirror. I was in charge of booking our hotel in Austin, and she was in charge of booking our hotel in New Orleans. We took turns driving the few hours in between. We ate barbeque and took pictures of scenery out the car windows. We laughed and bought vintage dresses. Even at the time, I think I knew we wouldn't ever do it again.
Nina and I fell in love our senior year of high school. We'd known each other for years, and had been friendly all the while, but it happened all of a sudden—acute, glorious best friendship. It was like finding the one other person in the world who spoke my language—she was just my people. We shared bottles of wine and lip stain, as if we needed both. Nina was funny and goofy and unbelievably cool, and being with her made me feel like I was those things, too. We'd both been previously attached to girls from middle school, the kind of best friends you swore allegiance to on an playground you'd outgrown, an arrangement it wasn't always easy to wriggle out of—but when we finally made our way to each other, it was magic. When we both decided to attend the same college, no one was surprised. I was ready to leave behind most of my friends from high school, but not her.
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