Finalist for the 2025National Book AwardforYoung People’s Literature From the critically acclaimed author ofAll the Fighting Partscomes an empowering and defiant novel in verse in which a teen poet grapples with an unplanned pregnancy and determines what happens to her body in a world that wants to take the choice away from her. Seventeen-year-old Truth Bangura wants nothing more than to know a life beyond her hometown. Writing and performing is her only solace in a life overwhelmed by a drifting relationship with her best friend, an emotionally turbulent home environment, and the reality that her below average grades make her true dream—escaping her mother’s grasp after graduation—uncertain. When Truth learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she’s finally sure about: an abortion.