Hector Kuri-Gonzales (Sueño)   Hector is a seventeen year old junior at Immaculata High School. He was held back a grade when he was ten and his family moved from Guadalajara, Mexico to the United States. They came to Washington because Sueño's little sister, Maria (now 15), broke her back in a fall. Wanting to get the best possible medical care for Maria, still hoping that she would be able to walk again, Papa brought the family to the United States and bought a restaurant, which he has made into a local landmark. There is a steady stream of cousins to the big apartment above the restaurant. Many of these visitors start life in the U.S. by working at La Mariposa. Sueño wouldn't have time for sports, even if his height would allow it. (At 5'5", he worries that he'll never find a girl he likes who doesn't look down on him.). But in between school and the delivery work he does for his father's catering business, Sueño loves to dance. And he's good at it.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, before the dinner crowd comes in, Maria will bring her friends from school into La Mariposa for an hour of fun. They play dance tunes on the restaurant's sound system, and even the solemn cousins from Guadalajara dance. Maria (and a number of her friends) say that Hector dances like a dream, and that's where he got his nickname, Sueño. But there is another reason as well for the name, one shared only by Maria and Hector. At the time of Maria's accident, when she was in great pain, Hector often came to her in dream state, to make her forget her fears for a while. Even now, when Maria has trouble falling asleep, she will rap with a broom on the ceiling of her room (which is the floor of Sueño's room) and he will come sit on the floor by her bed, telling her stories in Spanish until they both fall asleep.