Every Variable of Us

Alexis Duncan has built her future around basketball until a gang shooting leaves her injured and her scholarship plans in jeopardy. The Philadelphia teenager turns toward an unfamiliar alternative: her school’s STEM team, whose members also hope academic competition will open a path to college. New student Aamani Chakrabarti helps make that possibility feel less remote, and Alexis’s interest in her is not purely academic. Learning to see herself beyond athletics brings opportunity, but old loyalties and doubts continue to pull at her. Charles A. Bush’s YA novel places a developing relationship between two girls within a larger story about race, class, education and rebuilding a future after violence.