All We Could Have Been

162 days.

That’s how long Lexi needs to survive at her new school. Her record is 134, but this time it’s senior year. If she can make it until June, she can disappear into the real world. Maybe a big city, where no one recognizes her, and no one knows about her brother.

Of course, she’s had five tries now, and someone always figures out who she is. Someone always realizes she’s the little sister of Scott, the boy who committed the most heinous act imaginable.

Every year since, Lexi has gone to a new school under a new name, hiding in plain sight for as long as she can manage. Anything but being herself and the girl everyone already thinks they know.

162 days, she tells herself, but that doesn’t take into account her new friend, Ryan, who makes her believe that she belongs somewhere. It doesn’t account for Marcus, her new neighbor, and the way his eyes shine.

And it doesn’t account for how fiercely she misses her older brother. He was the boy who hung out with her every hot, sticky summer, reading comics and riding bikes. The boy who applied bandaids to scraped knees and chased away spiders. Lexi can’t reconcile that boy with the man behind bars, yet somehow she has to.

It turns out you can’t really run away from who you are. Eventually, it catches up with you.

And for Lexi, 162 days is a few too many.

Ficção / Jovem adulto / Literatura Estrangeira