ulie lives with her boyfriend in the strange and fascinating universe that is the Rio Grande Valley. It is a flat, dry place—full of abandoned orchards and palm trees that slump in the heat. We eat breakfast tacos every morning. One day, the man behind the counter asks if I’m a teacher. No, I say, but why? Because a lot of white girls from the north get sent down here. Julie’s boyfriend jokes that I should have said I’m a third-generation Mexican-American whose forefathers worked the fields, thank you very much. Of course that is not what I tell the guy behind the counter. I tell him I’m from Dallas, and that the breakfast tacos were very delicious, and I leave feeling a little funny, like I’ve been found out.

Julie has announced a theme for this weekend: “Fuck the Worry, we’re gonna have a good time!” Her voice pitches up when she says good, and she pronounces it like “goot": We’re gonna have a GOOT time! It’s because we both like mottos and Capitalized Concepts and vacations that beg for themes. It’s also because I’ve been worried lately. But that is probably obvious.

When I get worried, I start imagining my own death in everyday activities: “My return flight is the evening of July 4,” I emailed her a month ago. “This vastly increases the chances of being hit by a stray firework and thus crashing so as long as you won’t feel too guilty about this on the off-chance it happens—I’ll book it!”
Her response was brief: “I know you’re kidding.”
I am. (Kind of.) But it could happen—we could all die at any minute--and it seems to me that death becomes less likely to happen the more you talk about it. And if it does happen, then at least you die something of a Nostradamus. “All I’m saying is that if the plane crashes, I want people to know I was prescient.”
“Shut up,” she emails. “Book the flight.”

Of course, the whole point of the trip is not worrying—Eff the Worry!—so it's filled with GOOT times. On the first day we head to Target and lose two hours combing the aisles, and then we go to South Padre, and lay on chairs and drink pina coladas with sand grit at the bottom and eat ceviche covered with what I suspect is cumin, and on the way home we sing Jesus Christ Superstar and get lost because we are both singing at the top of our lungs. On the second day, we cross the border into Mexico, and I buy a cute, stripey fake Kate Spade purse and we drink cheap margaritas and load up on duty-free liquor. And we go to party with Julie’s nice lawyer friends and the pool is so welcoming, warmed by the scorching sun, and I drink beer until I find myself speaking to strangers about the war with tears in my eyes and I know it’s time to go home.

On the third day, the Worry starts creeping back, and I get antsy and scared and weepy all at once. On the way to the airport, Julie tells me I’m the first person to cry leaving the Valley – that usually it’s the other way around. And we laugh about this, but I’m all ajumble. Still, I get on the plane and cross my fingers that I don’t die, and though this must sound like a crazy, tortured way to live your life--imagining gruesome death scenarios--the one nice thing is that when you touch down, you feel so grateful. You are not dead! You are still alive! And I know it sounds silly, but it is something.

Well, it is everything.