Nest Pitch SJ1: The New Black

Category/Genre: YA Thriller

Word Count: 50,000


Pitch: The last place Antoine thought he'd take his final breath was face down in a white-trash trailer. But, gun to the back of his head, he knows it's the only way to save his sister.

If the MC was an Easter Egg he/she would be:  Velvety milk chocolate would be the easy answer, 'cause that's what my boyfriend calls me.







Excerpt:





My foot lowers softly, lightly pressing down the ruffled edges of the ragged and stained K-mart clearance t-shirt that's laying on the floor of this busted-ass trailer. 
The floor gives slightly under my weight, but there's no creak. 


Good.

Ten feet in front of me a silver knob glows, the light coming in from the kitchen behind my shoulder, reflecting off the bedroom door. Behind it's the man with answers. Only he knows where my sister is and I don't care what I have to do to get that info. I'll beat him black and blue if I have to.


I tiptoe around the scattered garbage in this den of degradation. A greasy pizza box lays splayed open before me, and I take a measured step over the stale, nibbled crusts and plant my foot firmly on the other side. The carpet is worn in the middle from decades of use, with stained, cream curls on either side, blackened by mildew and disuse, and it reminds me of my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Lederer. 


After his wife died he stopped taking care of himself, letting his patchy beard grow out and forgetting to shower for weeks at a time. The worst part was the bald mohawk stripe that lived in the middle of his head. Shiny in the fluorescent light of science class, both the back and sides eventually grew up around it, dirty gray with specks of black scattered throughout. It was a beacon that drew my attention every day at two. No matter what his flat voice droned on about all I could do was watch it as the light reflected off in various directions.


His oily head called to me then, just as the low hum of music from under the bedroom door calls to me now.


Six feet to go.