After she is injured in a gang shooting, seventeen-year-old Alexis Duncan’s dreams of a college scholarship and pro basketball career vanish, but, to avoid becoming another black teen trapped in her poverty-stricken neighborhood, Alexis shifts her focus to the school’s STEM quiz bowl team, a group of self-professed nerds seeking their own futures outside of West Philly. Academics have never been her thing, but Alexis is freshly motivated by Aamani Chakrabarti, the new Indian student who becomes her friend (and crush?). Alexis begins to see herself as so much more than an athlete. But just as her future starts to reform, Alexis’s own doubts and old loyalties pull her back into harm’s way.