Sunday 

Ricardo was all over the news today, which we consumed. It was strange, witnessing the dissection of our friend by invisible subjects, the vulturine gaze of the public eyes directed at his name, printed onscreen, in letters soaked black with blood unfurling slowly into the margins of the broadcast. We had all made it out, out of this desert at least. 

I got a lot of messages from out of state which I viewed from the kitchen counter, on my PC. Friends from among the years, remembering vaguely that I lived in this part of the state, my biome assigned to me from birth, the teleonomy of which (they would not be able to know about me, a virtual friend) could be traced in my bronzed quality of pigment and lacertiloid threshold for perspiration. After a brief but necessary exchange of personal concern and civic sympathy, they all asked what they really wanted to know, which I suspected they had ventured from out their caves in an attempt to confirm. 

Did you know him? They’d asked. And I’d told them that actually I did. We were friends back in high school. He was a part of our group, one of us. 

He was one of us, one of the boys, but now that status was in jeopardy, decision regarding annulment: almost certain. It was a simple decision but not one that could be made without a convening of the group. It was precisely this new situation in which I thought we should come together and deal with it head on, in order to make peace with it and heal. Fortunately Jared, the unofficial leader of our group (we were all individually friends with him first), had the same idea as me and sent a message into the general chat: 

No performative outrage. No bullshit. We discuss like men tonight. 7pm. 

At 7 we were in a group call; it was the familiar setting of most of our interactions. I couldn’t remember the last time we had (almost) everyone in a call together. We’re usually all in and out of here on a regular, everyone on different schedules since we started working. But now that I thought about it it’d been a while since we’d heard from Ricardo. I think all of us figured something was probably going on. We should’ve checked on him, but that’s hindsight. 

“Okay, when’s the last time anyone here has even talked to him?” Jared demanded to know. 

“A few months ago,” I say. That might have been a lie in essence. I checked our chat logs and it was a few weeks short of a year, the last time he’d said anything back to me. “February,” says Terrell. 

“2024,” says Raveesh. “He kinda slowly stopped talking to all of us at similar times.” I’d only been to his house once, and all I remember about it was that it was decorated like a model home. I whispered that thought to Terrell in confidence once, at lunch, and later that night he brought it up during a call in which we were all present. 

TERRELL

Soooo Ricky. Why does your house look like a model home, bro. 

RICARDO 

(after about 8 seconds) 

What? 

ME 

Terrell shut the fuck up. 

JARED 

Wait dude you’re right ha ha. 

But by now I was in the conceptual stages of figuring something out about this entire situation, the truth value of which refused to come unstuck in my mind. A theory slowly materializing within the sudden vacancy of the call, a new angle of vantage: something that nobody was talking about. Had I come ahead of the curve of public thought? Or had I missed a crucial sophism obvious to anyone viewing it without stock in their own correctness? 

“Remember that time we got him to play CS with us and he ended up clutching the 1v4 to win the game in triple OT?” Ekans chimed in. 

The discussion had progressed, having moved beyond tangible communication. But we were silent, all still somewhat stunted by the situation’s gravity. 

“Look,” Jared began anew. “We still haven’t talked about it, but we can’t avoid it. Does anyone have any ideas why he did it?” 

I did. I’d been having thoughts that were perhaps significant, but they weren’t ready to be shared yet. The thoughts’ complexity required further investigation which only I could carry out in solitude. Not as a testament to my sleuthing, but I had the fear that if they left my brain prematurely they would never come alive at all. I created a new online document I titled: THE DESSICATION OF RICARDO MENDOZA. I knew what I had to do this week. On the first line, center margin, I typed: Product of Mescalero High School. 

He was one of us. 

Monday 

Everyone here has a different relationship to the desert. Even the ones who don’t think to identify it as a desert, viewing it as the entire world. Because the thing is, they’re wrong. It is verifiably not the entire world. It’s just another mask we’ve overlaid onto it. 

I’m frowning, looking at my PC. The clock overhead floods my inner ears with a sonic rigidness that mocks me. My flaws as a writer, my self imposed cages. An EV’s ghastly whirring occurs outside the window, and the room’s white noise continues to be disseminated by its white

walls. I exhale and face the screen again, and blink which sends lubricating liquid to the fronts of my eyes. 

All of us were made for the desert. 

I can’t write this yet. 

Work was canceled, in observance of communal grief. Mandy, the only manager with whom I have mobile communication, texted me last night, alerting me to the company’s provisional schedule for navigating this tragedy. 

No work Monday, the text read. 

What about Tuesday? I replied. 

I woke up without an answer back. But I had messages from friends, at least four individual chats to reply to. I’d laid in bed and taken my time, trying to enjoy my day off. What was he like? They were asking me. 

Funny you should ask. I don’t know the answer to that question. He was always really quiet, as if to show contrition for a grave sin committed offscreen, in a previous life perhaps. In the call last night we were struggling to piece together a coherent timeline, because in doing so we realized for the first time how much information about our friend we were lacking. 

We’d tried to reframe the focus towards IRL memories. An attempt was made to reconstruct a representation of his psyche from empirical evidence. We took turns sharing what had left impressions on us in a circular rotation, propelled by the inertia of our history. 

The only memory I think I had unique access to was when I was paired with him and Sara Escamilla to make a cardboard raft for the physics class boat race. We’d met after school a few times to plan the construction of our raft, which we completed in its entirety during allotted class time. There was no leadership in that trio, nothing really holding us together. Ricardo would sometimes whisper things to me, but mostly we tried to make ourselves receptacles for a unifying direction which nobody ended up supplying. When it was time for the race neither me nor him volunteered (it only needed to hold one) so Sara got in the raft and it sank upon reaching the pool’s midpoint. 

“I see,” Jared had said, sounding deep in thought. “But do you remember anything he specifically said or did? Otherwise we can’t really use that.” 

Put on the spot, I panicked and let fly a thought I’d been saving for later. But right after, I realized it was too on the nose for that particular instance. 

“He had dark humor.” 

“Didn’t we all, back then?”

As it turned out, nobody remembered much about the things he’d said or done. He was the type to make comments that stopped conversations, drying them out. They were dialogic residue by design, generated for that precise purpose.  

“Did they recover a manifesto or anything?” Terrell asked. 

“If there was one it’d be in government hands,” Ekans said. It was as good as nonexistent, if it was even existent. We couldn’t even say we knew that much. If only we could have talked to him. 

Everyone was kind of bummed out and tired and we decided we’d spend Monday scouring our individual chat logs searching for useful clues. Our meeting time would be the same, and we’d lay all of our clues together and contrive to see lines surely connecting them all. 

Which brings me to the kitchen counter, where my PC sits flanked by my coffee, and a blue spiral notebook. I spent the night trying to conjure up meaningful information to no success. But it’s a new day. Did you know we wake up every day a new person? I open Discord and locate my messages with Ricardo. 

Ricky447. There you are. 

I double click the corresponding image. 

May 14, 2017 

Ricky447 

Hey my gamer tag is Ricky447 

Me 

Added u 

October 27, 2018 

Ricky447 

U free 

? 

October 29, 2018 

Me 

Sry didn’t see this 

December 2, 2018

Ricky447 

I’m one game away from gold 

Need 20 rr 

Me 

I’m getting on 

We ball 

June 4, 2023 

Me 

Hey bro 

Everything good? 

Ricky447 

I am good 

👍

Me 

How’s college 

It’s been so long 

June 9, 2023 

Ricky447 

Not much I am just busy all the time 

It struck me that all of our textual conversations were accompanied by speech in calls. That actually, it was the texts that were the subtext to a superior form of communication. I messaged Ekans to see if he’d had the same realization as me. 

Ekans 

Ddude he blocked me 

*dude 

I literally can’t find his profile 

Me 

Damn 

thats crazy

I thought that was strange. What reason could Ricardo have had to do that? Now we all had another factor to brood over: the idea that perhaps, we were more involved in what happened than we’d assumed. Ricardo had implicated us in his actions, it seemed. 

I figured that there was something bigger going on that we were going to talk about when we all met again. I got up and went to the yard, with my coffee. The slam of the mesh door sent the doves into aerial retreat. I took two sips and walked around the yard via footpath. Then I went back inside. 

I saw that I’d received new messages from Ekans: 

Ekans 

This is weird asf 

Do you have time to call? 

I walked to the window. Realizing I couldn’t avoid it, I went back to my PC and responded: 

Me 

Sorry dude I’m busy 

Gotta check up on my dad soon 

Lets just talk tn 

His name is Raymond but he’s gone by Ekans since seventh grade. We didn’t question the validity of it but half of us thought it was kind of stupid. The other half figured we probably wouldn’t be friends for much longer after school. 

Anyways, I hadn’t been lying about needing to check up on dad— that was scheduled for tomorrow, after work, in the event that there would be work tomorrow, but seeing as I was free today I thought I might as well go. He’d asked me to help him with his charging cables, which he’d been having difficulty with. I figured I’d just buy him new chargers instead of trying to fix his. I grabbed my keys off the counter and went to the car. 

I’m sitting in my Honda Fit when I realize something. I pull out my phone and write it down for later: 

Everything we’ve ever known about Ricardo dies here with us 

The first stop I had to make was the supermarket. The streets were deader than usual as I drove past them, and flags were at half mast. The market itself was steeped in an early shock, in the process of materializing reverential grief. Allowing the bodies to function the way they’re supposed to, to feel, a necessary cycle: disposal of waste, the emotions we don’t need daily. Let days stack, then see how you feel about it. Desert wind cauterizes. Most people I passed grimaced at me; I couldn’t tell if they were trying to smile. I did the same back, offering my condolence for having bore witness to the fruit of this city’s industry. 

Shopping List: 

• Eggs 

• Bananas 

• Frozen blueberries 

• 6 cartons of soy milk 

• Peanut butter 

• Oatmeal 

• Wheat toast 

• Zucchini 

I made the short drive to Best Buy, where I purchased a 240W USB-C charging cable, a 24W 3 port power bank, a 20W USB-C power adapter, and a 15W wireless fast charging station with a built-in stand and LED indicator light. As I was leaving, the door greeter smiled and said: “Be safe please!” I looked at her in her eyes. Grin with teeth. A plain mask, human empathy behind it. I told her the same, then ducked my head and walked out. 

There were actually parking spaces available at the senior home today. At the door I inputted dad’s room number and announced through the intercom: 

I am here. 

The door shuffled open and I lugged the groceries and chargers up to the third floor. When I walked into dad’s unlocked room he was sitting on the floor, trying to stretch his hamstrings. He noticed the bags in my hands and rushed to take them from me. I batted his arms away and told him to sit down. 

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said, continuing to paw at my arms from below. I set the bags down on the kitchen floor and began to load the fridge. 

“It’s not safe out there.” 

“Why wouldn’t it be, dad?” 

“Look at what your friend Ricky did! All the roads near the university are blocked, and the federal government is still sending more people here, snooping around, asking questions. You should stay inside if you know what’s good for you.” 

“You think I’m in danger… from the feds?” 

“Is that even a question?” 

“Of course. Where are your outlets?” 

“Listen to me.” 

I turned around to look at him. Precisely I found my sightline focused on his yellowing teeth, which looked particularly brittle from accumulating gum recession. Just a ticking bomb

waiting to go off. I wondered what he would do when the day finally came. Or if the trajectory of that event would be intercepted by a more significant occurrence. 

“Things are about to get bad. Everyone in Mescalero is in danger,” he said, his eyes enlarged. He continued: 

“Do you understand what Ricky did? He put this place on the map. The entire country has their attention on us. Do do you hear me?” 

“And what makes that dangerous?” 

“You wouldn’t understand, because you’re an American. You’re a westerner. In the east, nobody wants to stand out. To stand out puts you in position to be investigated and attacked from every angle, angles you can’t even see.” 

“Why fear investigation if I did nothing wrong?” 

“My god,” he said, smacking his brown, pudgy face. I quietly placed his defunct chargers into the Best Buy bag, repurposing it into a trash bag. 

“Listen to me.” 

“I’m listening.” 

“I know that you had no involvement in what happened. I know this. Everyone with common sense knows this. But the government is not looking for the truth. Can we agree on this?” 

I didn’t know what to say. It seemed to me the kind of generalization that, if prodded, would ultimately reveal a concerning facility of my dad’s cognitive process. “Sure.” 

“Soon, the government is going to be looking for everyone that knows Ricardo. It doesn’t matter how small the relation. They can see everyone you’ve ever called or messaged, even if you delete it.” He paused to breathe. The room became quiet, as if we were the only people. Trucks were passing outside. 

“So I must ask you now. Did you know anything about what he was planning?” “No dad, of course not.” 

“Did your friend ever mention any interest in things like that, or-” 

“No, not to me.” 

“What about your other friends?” 

“We were all blindsided.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“How could we have known he was planning to shoot Nick Fuentes? That’s not something you can just tell people.” 

“Not even your friends?” 

“We hadn’t talked to him for over a year.” 

“Did he have any other friends?” 

“Um, we don’t know.” 

“Do you know what his parents have said?” 

“I don’t think they’ve said anything yet.”

“Have you ever seen his parents?” “No.”