Excerpt from We Could Be Anyone by Anna-Marie McLemore, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I listened for anyone approaching. I watched for ladies setting out on early morning walks, their satin hats as round and colorful as macarons. Nothing. So I surveyed my target: a credenza so recently polished it smelled of lemon and oil. I considered its offerings. A geometrically patterned amphora. Too heavy. A gilt-embroidered tapestry fragment. Too bulky, too hard to take down from the wall (and too bad, because that was a lot of gold thread).

My favorite finds were the little statuettes I could pocket in one motion. Last time, I'd picked up an alabaster swan that fetched enough to cover my car fare and then some. I wasn't seeing anything like that here, though.

I did like the look of a silver picture frame. It had a nice weight to it, enough to command a good price. Currently, it displayed a photograph of Bixby Fairfax and Blythe Bell, lord and lady of The Coterie. There were dozens of photos of the two of them around here. No one would miss it. No one ever missed anything I took. I scanned every newspaper my brother bought, and there was never once a mention of theft at the hilltop resort.

"A fine piece," the man at the pawnshop said later that morning. He handed over less than it was worth, and we both knew it. But he didn't complain about where I got my goods, so I didn't complain about his prices.

I was almost to the door when he called out, "Don't you want the photograph?"

The back of my neck went cold. I could have sworn I removed the picture of Fairfax and Blythe Bell. Even Stan couldn't look the other way if he thought I was stealing from the most powerful couple on the West Coast.

But no. The picture was still folded up in my pocket.

Stan was alongside me now. He had removed what I thought had been a plain white backing. But he turned it over, revealing another photograph. It showed a sprawling tree and a handful of socialites lounging on its boughs. Their painted lips caught the light. The fabric and beading of their evening gowns dripped from the branches like glittering water.

"Of course." I took the photograph. "Thank you."

None of the women lounging in that tree were Blythe Bell. None of them looked famous or familiar. But they were exactly the kind of lovely, careless women who reveled in The Coterie's glamour and in their own beauty. They glowed with ease and leisure. To them, the resort was nothing but a fairyland. And that was exactly what called to the rage inside me. It was as sharp as fingernails digging into my ankles. It was as strong as hands gripping my calves, holding me to the dusty ground behind the pawnshop.

As I rushed home, the feeling only came on stronger. It stung and burned along my calves. One minute, it was as sharp and focused as an ant's bite. The next, it was dull and spreading, like a growing pain.

When I got back to our rented room, I tore off my stockings.

Twisting cords of dark red entwined my ankles and my lower calves. They looked so much like blood that I touched them to see if they would come off on my hands. But the dark red wasn't liquid. Those lines were raised, like vines clinging to my skin. When I tried to pull on them, the pain was as sharp as trying to rip out my own hair.

These weren't vines climbing up my legs. They were growing out of me, as though my veins were now on the outside of my skin.

When I'd found out the truth about The Coterie, I thought my rage would eat me alive.

But now it was turning me inside out.

LISANDRO

It didn't start with how he looked. It never did.

Maybe that was why it had taken me so long to figure out I was gay. The things that drew me to other boys were so small and strange that it was easy to write them off. The pronunciation of a certain word, library or mischievous or February. How a scar on his forehead buckled when he laughed.

Or, right now, in the middle of Harrison's Hardwares, the way the boy down the aisle was biting his nails.

Excerpted from We Could Be Anyone by Anna-Marie McLemore. Copyright © 2026 by Anna-Marie McLemore. Excerpted by permission of Feiwel & Friends. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.