Photography by Kathy Tran
Julie Salinas was a year older and the new kid in school, but she was so pretty and outgoing, immediately popular at Stevens Park Elementary.
Ana DeLeon noticed Salinas, who also lived in the apartments “behind Bronco Bowl,” on Ba- hama Drive. She says she was awkward and less popular herself and was surprised when the cool girl paid attention to her.
“She just started coming around and talking to me, so of course I wanted to be her friend,” DeLeon says.
They were like sisters, always together, spending the night, sharing makeup and doing all the silly things that adolescent girls do. One summer they spent the whole night camped out in front of the Bronco Bowl.
“If my kids did that now, I would kill them,” Salinas says.
They both swear that they saw a bicycle gliding by with no rider that night. Surely, sleep depravation had something to do with it.
At Stevens Park Elementary, they used to get in trouble for their hair-sprayed bangs being too high.
“One time I didn’t want to be in trouble by myself, so I said, ‘Ana has them too!’” Salinas recalls.
Now 37 and 38, they hardly ever disagree, but sometimes as kids, they had physical fights.
Once, Salinas’ older sister kicked them out of her apartment for fighting and told them to go home. So they walked home on opposite sides of the street, even though they knew they would have to pass each other to reach their doors.
“I just said, ‘See you tomorrow,’” Salinas says. “And that was it.”
DeLeon moved to Georgetown, Texas, a few years after high school, and one day she called her friend after they’d stayed out of touch for awhile.
“I said, ‘guess what, I’m pregnant,’” DeLeon says. “She was like, ‘me too.’”
Those daughters, now 17, were born a month apart and have been best friends their whole lives.
DeLeon says her mother had health problems when she was growing up and was in a wheelchair. They didn’t have much money.
“She always helped me through those hard times,” DeLeon says of Salinas.
Salinas was there for her friend when her mother died, just as DeLeon was there for her recently when her 27-year- old nephew died.
“I don’t know what I would do without her,” Salinas says.
