Nobody had wanted to sit next to Florence in the cafeteria. You couldn’t blame the kids. She ate her orange peels as she stared into the middle distance. Teachers had learned to let the small, dread inducing child flow through their lessons. Easier than getting caught into her mind games and deceptive words.

Florence Valentino came from the Valentino family. They’d been a pillar of the community for over eighty years in the small town of Cranston, Colorado. Some of the students had once heard Florence tell a teacher her family descended from the conquistadors that took Tenochtitlan with Cortes. Others heard her talk about coming from a vaquero line. The smart, cautious ones banked on both accounts being true.

Rarer still, were the students who heard Florence talk about the curse laid on her family. She’d mentioned to a brave kid that sat at her table in the cafeteria that an Aztec priest had cursed her ancestor as he fought alongside Hernan Cortes. The kid failed to ask what the curse was and Florence didn’t offer. Still, it made the other students wary when she’d slowly pull a smile across her face as she slipped into the middle distance.