By the time the kids are fed and put to bed, her husband has shut off the TV, and she’s in her sleep shorts and tank under the covers, it’s 11pm. She knows there’s no chance of going to sleep just now, even though she should be ready to drop like a stone. But the adrenaline from her non-stop day has her a tad too wired to close her eyes just yet.

Maybe she has time to peek at just one more manuscript before bed.

WHALE

It’s the most recent full, the one she just requested. The title snags her, compels her to scroll up to the pitch. The one that had her requesting the full before she’d even finished reading her sample pages:

#OwnVoices YA Thriller. A sixteen-year-old card counter with $40,000 in debt and loan sharks closing in gets one shot at conning Vegas's biggest whale — enough money to finally build the poker club her late father never lived to open. When her partner betrays her mid-con, she has ten days to finish the job alone, evade the cops, and outrun the very people she owes, before her father's dream dies with her.

It’s not every day you see a YA thriller with a BIPOC lead. Interesting.

She starts from the beginning.

One of us is a dead man, a bullet between the eyes all hinging on the wrong flip of a coin.

Jessica sucks in a breath. Damn. Now that’s an opening. Her eyes fly across the page, heart already jackhammering in her chest. She’s never been to Vegas, where Tara, the protagonist was born and raised, but she can see the twinkle of the lights on the Strip. She can smell the stale cigarette smoke drifting from drunkards lighting one up as they stumble their way home. She can hear the rattle of Tara’s old…what does she call it? “hooptie”...as it claws its way to her apartment.

And there’s that feeling, in her gut. That shimmery, shuddery magic that has goosebumps rippling across her skin, and adrenaline pumping hard in her veins.

She’s addicted.

Forty grand. That's what I owe. That's the number flashing behind my eyes right now instead of the cards in front of me, and I need it gone, I need it to disappear the way Dad used to make quarters disappear behind my ear when I was six and still believed in things like magic and rent getting paid on time.

Focus.

Seven of clubs. King of diamonds. The count ticks up in my head automatic as a heartbeat, +1, +1, running total climbing steady while my face does absolutely nothing, gives away nothing, because Robert Hark is watching me the way a man watches a horse he's thinking about buying, and if he clocks even a flicker he'll fold this whole night like a bad hand and I will be exactly where I started. Worse than where I started. More like ended.

"You're quiet tonight," Hark says, sliding another stack forward like it's nothing, like eight thousand dollars is a stick of gum he's offering me.

I laugh, light, easy, the laugh I practiced in the bathroom mirror for two weeks straight until it stopped sounding like an act. "Just thinking."

Lie. I'm not thinking. I'm doing math so fast it doesn't feel like thinking anymore, it feels like breathing, the way Dad taught me before the cancer ate the rest of the time we were supposed to have, sitting cross-legged on our shitty apartment floor with a deck of Bicycles that had gone soft at the corners, saying count for me, baby girl, count like your whole life depends on it because someday it might.

Someday's here, Dad.

The dealer flips the turn. Ten of hearts. My stomach does the Cupid Shuffle and I don't let it reach my face, I don't let it reach anywhere Hark can see, I just watch the card land like it means nothing to me at all, like I'm not already three moves ahead building a poker room with green felt tables and my father's name on a brass plate by the door, like my hands aren't sweating, like somewhere across this city Mark isn't already —

No.

Not now. Can't think about Mark right now. Can't think about anything except the deck, the count, the three days that are about to become two, the whole tower of a plan I built stone by stone that's already, slowly, starting to tilt.

Hark smiles like he's got me exactly where he wants me.

Jessica blinks at the soft gray light peeking through the blinds. Light? What?

She just sat down. She just…

She glances at the time. 5:26 AM.

She should be exhausted, gritty, worn-thin. Instead there’s a fizzing in her veins, like a Coke bottle shaken one too many times. Pop-rocks in her stomach. She should get some sleep.

But…there’s only forty more pages left. She has to finish it. She tears herself away for only the two seconds it takes to open an email. Her fingers fly fast enough that she has to stop three times to correct typos:

Subject: Offer of Representation

Hello Jennifer,

I ADORED your manuscript, WHALE! I couldn’t fly through this one fast enough. It’s been a long time since I got this excited over a manuscript. I’d love to offer you representation. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience. My contact information is below my signature.

I can’t wait to speak to you soon!

Sincerely,

Jessica Stanton