“Anyway, they’re the only thing we have,” added Pancho, blowing smoke. We all agreed, laughing.

Last details.

Since neither Marquito nor I have ski masks like the Carrascos’, we agree to use black shirts as hoods. The clock in the Carrascos’ kitchen says 10:30 p.m., and we’ve just realized there are a couple of tools we need that their father doesn’t have. They aren’t essential for the mission, but we can’t risk it. I say I think I’ve seen them in my father’s toolbox, and we decide Pancho will go with me to get them; when we return, all of us will go to keep watch at the church. We’ll start the operation at 3:00 sharp.

The street is empty, and Pancho doesn’t stop talking the whole way to my house. He’s more excited then ever. He asks me, over and over, if I understand what we are about to do. “Do you get it? Do you get it?” he repeats, almost shouting. He walks fast, with determination, his eyes staring. But then he looks me straight in the eyes for a second and tells me that we’re going to strike big now, and after we do, nothing will stop us, we’ll be invincible. I look at him and reply with the same sureness that yes, I do get it, we’re really going to do it, it’s already practically done. We are invincible.

My house is dark when we arrive, and the first thing we see inside is my father stretched out on the sofa. His position gives the impression that nothing could wake him up. We also see a puddle of vomit on the floor. Pancho makes a gesture like he’s drinking from a bottle, and then cocks his head to the side, sticks out his tongue, and rolls his eyes back, imitating my father’s drunken face. I tell him to go back to the patio, where the tools are. Once he’s gone, I approach my father. I observe his body splayed out on the sofa, my grandmother’s old sofa that he had repaired himself using a couple of nails and then stuffed with wool. His face—in contrast to the room, so full of newspapers, wood, and garbage—is empty, expressionless. He looks old, old and useless. Looking down at him lit by the faint light that makes it through the curtains, I think how low he has fallen, and how different I am. And all that time I look at him, and all those thoughts and all that revelatory silence, makes it even more incredible and humiliating that I haven’t realized what is happening, and that it’s Pancho who, after trying to play a joke on him with the wrenches he’d gone to find, finally shouts that my father isn’t breathing.

Days later, Pancho told me that he’d never run so fast, and that in the end all that training hadn’t been for nothing. I hadn’t even finished shouting for him to go for help when he jumped up and ran out of the house and up the hill. Of course, nothing that had to do with training, with our plan, with ninjas, or with Pancho himself made sense to me any longer.