Excerpt from The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

To call them meetings seemed gratuitous, but Nella wasn't in the mood to go down that slippery slope. She had more important things to pursue. Like how to get rid of Sophie.

Nella reached for her phone, let out a small groan, and said, "Whoa! Is it already ten fifteen? I actually need to make a very important phone call."

"Aw. Darn." Sophie looked visibly disappointed. "Okay."

"Sorry. But I'll report back!"

Nella would not report back, but she'd learned that punctuating too-long interactions with this promise made parting much easier.

Sophie smiled. "No prob. Later, girl!" she said, and off she went, as quickly as she'd come.

Nella sighed and looked around aimlessly, her eyes skipping over the stack of papers she still hadn't delivered to her boss. In the grand scheme of things, the speed with which one could bring something from point A to point B should have zero effect upon whether that person deserved to be an assistant editor—especially since she'd worked for Vera, one of Wagner's most exalted editors, for two years now. But things between them lately had been, for the lack of a better word, weird. Their anniversary check-in a few days earlier had ended on a less-than-savory note. When Nella had asked for a promotion, Vera had listed at least a dozen surprise grievances she'd had with Nella's performance as her assistant, the last being the most unsettling of all: "I wish you'd put half the effort you put into those extracurricular diversity meetings into working on the core requirements."

The word "extracurricular" had hit Nella hard and fast in the eye, like a piece of shrapnel. The company basketball team, the paper-making club—those were extracurriculars. Her endeavors to develop a diversity committee were not. But she'd smiled and said thank you to her boss, who'd started working at Wagner years before Nella was even born, and tucked this piece of information into her back pocket for safekeeping. That was where she believed any dreams of letting her Black Girl Flag fly free would have to remain.

But now the smell of Brown Buttah was hitting her nose again, and this time, there were telltale sounds: First, Maisy's practiced joke about Wagner's zany floor plan ("It makes about as much sense as the science in Back to the Future"); then, a laugh—deep, a bit husky around the edges, but still cocoa butter smooth at its core. Genuine, Nella could tell, as brief as it was.

"... impossible. I swear, once you find where one person sits, you'll never find them a second time!" Maisy cackled again, her voice growing louder as she led her companion closer to her office.

Realizing that they would have to walk by her own cube to get there, Nella looked up. Through the small crack in her partition, she spotted the swath of dark locs, the flash of a brown hand.

There was another Black person on her floor. And given Maisy's spiel, this Black person was here for an interview.

Which meant in the next few weeks, a Black person could quite possibly be sitting in the cube directly across from Nella. Breathing the same air. Helping her fend off all the Sophies of the Wagner office.

Nella wanted to put a victorious fist in the air, 1968 Olympics– style. Instead, she made a mental note to text Malaika this latest Wagner update the earliest chance she got.

"I hope your trip wasn't too long," Maisy was saying. "You took the train from Harlem, right?"

"Actually, I'm living in Clinton Hill right now," the Black girl responded, "but I was born and raised on One Thirty-Fifth and ACP for a while."

Nella sat up straighter. The girl's words, which sounded warmer and huskier than the laugh that had fallen easily from her mouth, evoked a sense of Harlem cool that Nella had always wished she possessed. She also noted—with reverence and not a little bit of envy— how confident the girl sounded, especially when Nella recalled her own anxiety-inducing interview with Vera.

Excerpted from The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. Copyright © 2021 by Zakiya Dalila Harris. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.