In an effort to further promote Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut young adult novel, I will be self-publishing a few YA novellas throughout the year. This particular novella, which I wrote a couple of years back, was originally an adult thriller set amid the high-stakes chaos of the 2008 financial crisis. After sending it to several hundred agents and getting no takers, I realized why: this book would work *way* better with teen characters. So, a few weekends ago, I finally sat down with it and thoroughly revised it. Now, finally, it is what is was supposed to be all along: a self-published YA novella.
Please enjoy this EXCLUSIVE free excerpt of The Short of It: A Financial Thriller (About and For Teenagers). Hope it whets your appetite for the full version, which is available for just $3.99 on lookitsabook.com!
Chapter 1
Brianna Kingley was going to smoke a cigar in her office, damnit. Even if it was her last official act as Vice President of Operations at Sauter Brothers Holdings, Inc., she was going to rip this stogie until it burned her totally teenage lungs. As the first adolescent female vice president of a major financial services firm, she was entitled to it, no matter what Nanny Bloomberg and his liberal pantywaist pals on the New York City Council said.
As she struck a match and lifted it to the cigar’s tightly rolled tip, she looked in the mirror. Even now at 17, she still had her looks. Teenage looks. Bright blond hair that was styled how all the wealthiest teenage girls styled it, with some sort of flip probably. A slim face that was not the face of a middle-aged man at all but the face of a pretty—some even described it in textual messages as “hawt”—teenage girl who, when she wasn’t going to high school and in love with Justin Bleeber like a normal Millennial, was running one of the nation’s foremost financial services companies.
Or what was one of the nation’s foremost financial services companies until about 10:31 that morning—the moment their short-sell bluff had been called by the Fed. More specifically, it had been called by Mason Kilgore, the teenage vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who, when he wasn’t playing high school sports like soccer and Wii bowling, was the toughest teen in the whole banking regulation apparatus, which had way more teens in it than most people might assume.
Now her whole company—and maybe the whole country—was going under. And who was to blame? The girl, who was not an adult man named Brian, watching herself suck in a mouthful of smoke. And that cute, cute bastard, Mason. If only they could work it out over a couple of Mountain Dews.
And if only she had his private cell phone number, for his cell phone that he’d owned since he was thirteen because that’s how it is these days…
“Hey, teenager,” Mason said when she called, in a voice that would not be described as gravelly, like that of the older man who had previously been the Fed Vice Pres and then died suddenly. From a being-old attack.
“Hey, teenager, yourself.”
“Been a long time since we’ve done that thing we teenagers do instead of play golf. Be friends with benefits, I mean.”
“If you’ll remember, Mason, last time we were friends with benefits you embarrassed me pretty bad out there on the friendship with benefits place. Which I guess would be your parents’ basement.”
“Oh, I remember.”
They shared a hearty adolescent laugh at that.
“Listen,” Mason said, cutting to the teenage chase. “I know you’re in it, Bri. Knee-deep and rising. What do you say we meet at the teenage bar, where they only serve Mountain Dew and chicken fingers, and talk about how to save the world.”
Brianna let him hang on the line, savoring the little power she’d have left if this whole cray-cray scheme fell through. “I thought you’d never ask.”
As a rule, Brianna Kingley never smiled. But she was alive again, if only for the time it took for her to legally drive her car to the teenage bar and hear Mason, that cutie son of a bitch who looked a little like Justin Bleeber, say he’d only been yanking her teenage chain, one last time.
So she smiled.
No one could see her braces because they were invisible.
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