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for a fight. Can’t take Uncle Neville anywhere , Sierra thought, but just then the greasy-haired guard came out of the library alongside a few others and ran toward the ruckus on the lawn.
    Sierra stood up and poked her head through the glass doors. No one was watching the entrance. Ignoring the tap dance her heart was doing in her ears, she ducked quickly through the low security arch, past the guard post, and into the library.

 
    Sierra had never seen so many books. Economic Development in the Third World , one title proclaimed loudly from a display table. Studies in Puerto Rican Literature said another. It’d never even occurred to her there was such a thing as Puerto Rican literature, let alone that it would be worthy of a thick volume in a Columbia University library. A smaller paperback was called Debating Uncle Remus: An Anthology of Essays and Stories about the Historic Southern Folktales .
    Stay focused, girl , she told herself, imitating her godfather’s voice. Do what you came here to do. She found a sprawling map and ran her finger along it till she found the area called Anthropology Archives. “Subbasement Seven?” she said out loud. “Great.” She passed through a loudly clanking doorway and went down two flights of concrete stairs that reeked of clove cigarettes and perfume.
    Subbasement Seven looked more like a warehouse than a library. Metal shelves stretched into the darkness of a vast gray hall. Churning machinery hummed somewhere close by. They must’ve had the AC cranked up all the way, because Sierra had to wrap her arms around herself for warmth as soon as she walked in.
    “Can I help you?” said a girl sitting behind a desk. She looked only a few years older than Sierra. She had a scarf wrapped around her neck and a knit cap pulled over her curly black hair. The name tag on her button-up shirt said NYDIA OCHOA .
    “I’m doing some research,” Sierra said. “For a project I’m doing in anthropology class. For summer session.” She fished a little scrap of paper from her jeans pocket and put it on the desk. “I’m studying a professor who used to work here? His name was Jonathan Wick.”
    Nydia’s face lit up. “Oooh!” she said, smiling conspiratorially. “Dr. Wick! Juicy stuff.”
    “You know Dr. Wick?”
    Nydia shook her head. “No, he’s been gone since, like, two semesters ago. He, um …” She leaned over the desk and lowered her voice. “Well, no one knows what happened to him. No —” She threw herself back into the swivel chair. “Check that. He completely vanished from the known universe. Like, poof. I asked everyone. I can’t help it that I’m curious, you know? But Ol’ Denton — the guy I took over for when they brought me in to run the archives —”
    “Wait.” Sierra put up a hand. “You run the archives?”
    “Well, the Anthropology Archives, yeah.”
    “But aren’t you like … twenty?”
    Nydia let a warm smile spread over her face. “Thirty-three, sweetheart.” She held up a framed photo of two grinning boys with dark brown skin and big afros. “And I got a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. But thanks for the compliment. Black don’t crack, ya know? And anyway, we Boricuas age at our own dang pace. You Puerto Rican, right?”
    Sierra nodded.
    “I love books and I wanna be around ’em all day, even if it’s in some dingy basement at a stuffy old university on the Upper West Side.” True to her heritage, the head librarian talked a mile a minute. “Eventually, Imma open my own library up here in Harlem, but like a people’s library, not just for academics. And it’ll be full of people’s stories, not just jargony scholar talk. This is like practice, really, and to boost my standing in the eyes of certain potential funders.”
    “You have a whole plan, huh?” Sierra said. She’d never met anyone like Nydia before.
    “Yeah. Anyway, Ol’ Man Denton told me all kindsa mysterious crap about this Wick guy. He was a big anthro dude,