The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil by Alisa Valdes

miss,
uhm...?”
    “Conner. I’m Kelsey Conner. I’ve been in your class
for four months.”
    “What about the coyotes?” asked Yazzie.
    “There are no coyotes in your class,” said Kelsey,
obnoxiously.
    “Maria’s dream, I meant,” said
Yazzie, missing the humor.
    Kelsey shrugged, and didn’t seem
at all uncomfortable the way I did. “Maria’s been having a
recurring nightmare since her car accident Friday, about coyotes
eating her for lunch.”
    “More like dinner,” I said, trying to lighten the
mood. It didn’t work. Yazzie’s eyes burned through me again.
    “That must be why your energy is off,” she told me
thoughtfully. “It makes sense.”
    “I’m just tired. And cold. Sick of the snow.”
    “No, it’s not that.” She frowned at me, and felt my
forehead the way a mother might if you told her you wanted to stay
home from school sick. “There’s something else. Something in your
etheric auric body feels agitated. You have brown in your aura for
the first time. Are you confused about something? It feels tangled
and unruly.”
    “Nothing a little heavy-duty conditioner can’t
cure,” deadpanned Kelsey.
    “Conner, hush,” said Yazzie, holding up a hand to
block her view of Kelsey altogether. “This is serious.”
    “Wow! You know my name!”
    “I’m fine,” I insisted to Yazzie. I didn’t know what
an etheric auric body was, and did not feel like finding out.
    “My dream,” Yazzie told me, her eyes widening. “I’ve only now
remembered it. You were with Masewa, in the Cochiti story of the
Arrow Boy.”
    “Sounds kinky,” said Kelsey.
    “Stop,” I said to Kelsey.
    Yazzie instantly, crazily, switched moods, perking
up and traipsing with girlish glee back toward her desk.
    “We’ve got a fascinating topic
today, Maria,” she called out to me. “ Sin . You think it’ll go over well
with high school kids?”
    “Abso-diddly-lutely,” said Kelsey.
    I said nothing because I was horrified to be singled
out again, and was conscious of the sympathetic snickers and rolled
eyes of my classmates.
    Soon, all 14 students in the class were seated.
Yazzie forgot to take attendance, as usual, and immediately began
instead to “read the energy” of the room, floating on the balls of
her feet between the rows of desks, chanting to herself, before
closing the shades on the windows, lowering the overhead lights,
firing up the projector, and flipping hastily through the slides
until she landed on one she liked. Most of her classes were of this
type, random slides and lectures on whatever she liked at the
moment, with a flexible chronological thread connecting them.
    “Class,” she said, “I’d like you
to take a look at this oil painting. It’s pretty famous, some of
you might be familiar with it if you’ve been reading ahead. The
title of this painting - which is done on three wood panels and
which hangs in the National Art Museum of Antiquities in Lisbon,
Portugal - is, and you might want to jot this down, The Temptation of St. Anthony .”
    I inhaled sharply at this,
remembering the little laminated prayer card Demetrio had given me
at the cafe. I’d stuffed it into the side pocket of my backpack. I
dug for it now, pulled it out and checked the name. Yep. Saint Anthony of the Desert . I slid it over to Kelsey, who responded with a surprised
face that seemed to echo my sense that it was a strange
coincidence.
    “That’s a little weird,” she whispered.
    “This is like the third thing like this that’s
happened since the crash,” I whispered back.
    “Girls,” said Yazzie, looking at us. “Is there
something you wish to contribute to our discussion?”
    “No, ma’am,” I said, conditioned to use the
honorific by my somewhat formal mother.
    “Then may I continue without your help?” asked
Yazzie. “And don’t ma’am me.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” said Kelsey, mocking me.
    “The artist,” continued Yazzie, ignoring Kelsey as
usual, her eyes on fire with passion for art,