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

No such words for the man who'd shoved me in the first place. There never were. Any protest in me was so familiar and so worn down it no longer had distinct edges.

I had to get out of places like this. But then I'd been saying that since I was twelve, and here I still was. Lola and I were small-time thieves. We were lucky to be making it in towns that barely showed up on maps.

"I don't want to see you in my store again." The owner pushed me toward the door. "We don't stock trouble here."

I stumbled onto the sidewalk. "What do I do when I need to buy something?" I asked, because this was the only hardware store for miles, and because apparently I felt like pressing my luck.

"Send that sister of yours," he said. "She knows how to behave with a little decorum. She could teach you a thing or two."

LOLA

Our parents taught us that we could become anything if we were clever about it. In the stories they told, sisters eluded hunters by taking the form of doves and then stars. Purehearted boys who let nothing shake their loyalty became mountains. Girls transformed into ocelots to exact revenge on merciless rulers.

But this was different.

This was vines growing out of my body. As I stared at them, tiny green buds dotted their length, the start of new leaves.

I knew this story. I'd grown up hearing it half a dozen ways. A girl offended a king. A maiden defied a goddess. A nymph spurned a prince. So many stories had the same ending: A girl did something wrong and was transformed into a tree for it.

I was letting my anger get the better of me, and it was showing up on my skin. If I couldn't keep it in check, I'd end up another one of those stories, another one of those girls. If I couldn't keep it in check, I couldn't go near The Coterie.

The brass doorknob rattled.

"I'm indecent!" I shouted.

"Sorry," Lisandro said from the other side of the door.

I pulled my stockings back on and settled myself in front of the mirror. "You may enter."

The door opened slowly. By the time my brother came all the way in, I was practicing my expressions in the mirror, perfecting my early Sarah Bernhardt. I never let my expressions get stale. We had a job to do, and my brother would know something was wrong if I was anything but my meticulous, theatrical best.

Lisandro's collar was lopsided, his hair askew.

I caught his eye in the mirror. "What happened to you?"

"A special on watering cans," he said. "Harrison sends his regards. Wants you to know what a proper lady he thinks you are."

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.