The large clock at the end of the reading room ticks to twelve thirty. Plenty of time.

“Thanks,” we say at the same time.

Patricia Piper raises her eyebrows above her glasses. “You must be sisters,” she says, and smiles.

Mercedes rolls her eyes. The thread tugs. Sisters. It feels more true out here in the real world, the world away from school, and our moms. The world of this college and this pretty library and this nice librarian—who doesn’t ask what two twelve-year-olds are doing alone on a college campus.

CHAPTER 28 Mercedes

I don’t want to page through some book. I want to get over to Madrone Hall so we don’t miss him again. But Mattie is in a trance. Over a book. I sit across the table from her as she pages through The Seed Sower. I mean, it’s cool that Frank Gómez wrote a book. And I agree it has a cool cover, but myths just make me think of our social studies project. Which we haven’t finished yet. I drum my fingers on the table.

“Look at this,” she yelps. “Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Here’s the story of the planets like they talked about at the planetarium. It’s Pichcaconqui,” she says very slowly.

“Pich-what?”

“Pichcaconqui,” she repeats. “It’s the name of the planets in…”—she turns the page—“Inca mythology. The five wandering stars, they’re called. Except, like Ms. Garcia said, there are eight planets.”

She turns the book so it faces me. There’s a drawing of five little men in the sky. I remember that night camping with Tristan’s dad. I remember pointing at the sky and saying to Mom, “Look, there’s an M.” I traced the stars that made a dot-to-dot letter M. “For Mercedes.”

Mom laughed and Tristan’s dad said, “It’s not an M. It’s a W. That’s the constellation Cassiopeia. She was a Greek queen who thought she was more beautiful than anyone else. And she was punished by being put in the sky.” Tristan’s dad looked at Mom and then winked at me. “But we can call it an M if you want.”

“Oh, here’s the Pleiades story, Mercedes,” Mattie says. She stops talking while she reads. “The Maya call them little fistfuls of seeds,” she tells me.

“Call what?”

“The Pleiades.”

I must have a blank look on my face because she explains. “The Pleiades are my favorite. They’re this little cluster of stars way on the edge of the galaxy. They’re called the Seven Sisters.”

OMG, I would not want seven sisters. This half of one is enough for me. I stand up. “Let’s go, Mattie.”

“Wait, look at this. It’s a poem. Why is there a poem? The rest of this book is stories and, I think, maybe just information about the different groups where the stories come from.”