Chapter 19 Pickle #2
Jake clocked my shift instantly. "What?"
I pulled out the phone. Juno's name.
"It's Juno."
"Answer it," Evan said.
I swiped.
"Hey." My voice came out almost normal. "What's up?"
"Pickle." Her tone was wrong. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me."
The cheese puffs turned to concrete in my gut. My grip on the phone was tight enough to ache.
Jake watched with laser focus.
"Okay," I said.
"I've been hearing things. Through my podcast network. Industry gossip. The kind of stuff that filters through when people are excited about a project."
"What kind of project?"
"A documentary. Coming out of Thunder Bay." She cleared her throat. "There's buzz about viral potential. A hockey player they're positioning as—" She paused. "They're calling it meme-ready content. A relatable disaster angle."
There it was again.
Relatable disaster.
Meme-ready.
I realized I'd stopped breathing and made myself inhale.
Jake was on his feet, hovering at the edge of my vision, radiating the kind of protective energy that usually preceded someone getting their teeth rearranged.
"Pickle." Juno's voice softened. "Have you seen the footage they're using?"
"No."
The word came out hollow.
Adrian had filmed me for weeks—at practice, at The Drop, in my apartment with the camera supposedly off—and I never got to see what existed. What he'd captured. What he'd sent.
He told me about the Zamboni and the chair at the Drop.
The armchair no longer felt comfortable. It felt like something I was trapped in.
"Pickle?" Juno's voice cut through. "You still there?"
"Yeah. Sorry. Just—" I laughed in a slightly demented tone. "I'm thinking about every embarrassing thing I've ever done on camera. I once taught Hog's dog to howl along to Bonnie Tyler. That's probably going to be a meme. That's my legacy now."
"I don't know exactly what's happening," Juno said. "Right now, it's whispers, but they are specific enough that I wanted to warn you. I think you need to ask direct questions of the person with the camera."
Adrian. She meant Adrian.
"He says he's handling it." The words nearly caught in my throat. "That's what he keeps telling me."
"And he's shown you what footage already exists? What's already been sent?" She caught herself. "I'm not saying he's lying. I'm saying handling it isn't the same as telling you the full truth."
"What do you think I should do?"
"Ask the questions you've been afraid to ask. Specific ones. Ask what footage exists. Ask what choices have been made about your image without your input."
"And if he doesn't answer?"
"Then you have your answer."
The words were harsh but probably true.
"Thanks, Juno."
"Call me if you need anything. Middle of the night, middle of a game—I'm here." A pause. "And Pickle? You're more than content. Whatever story they're trying to tell—that's not the only story. Don't let them make you forget that."
The call ended.
I sat there, the weight of everything pressing down on me like a physical thing.
Jake stopped pacing. "What did she say?"
I told them. The broad strokes. The rumors. The hockey player being framed as a meme.
By the time I finished, Jake looked like he wanted to put his fist through a wall.
"I'm going to kill him," he said conversationally. "I'm going to kill him, and Evan's going to help me hide the evidence."
"You're not killing anyone," Evan said.
"I'm considering it."
I looked down at my phone. Adrian's last message was probably still sitting there, unanswered.
Please don't walk too far.
I'd stopped walking. I'd stood in that parking lot in the cold, waiting for him to come after me with something real.
He hadn't.
And now this.
Jake grabbed the remote. Paused the TV without comment. The screen froze on a woman mid-sob, mascara streaking down her face, and one hand reaching toward a man already walking away.
Evan didn't say anything.
I didn't cry.
I'd expected to—that hot pressure behind my eyes and the crack in my chest that usually preceded a full Pickle meltdown, with ugly sobbing and snot.
The tears didn't come.
I sat. I breathed. I let the moment be what it was.
Jake's knee bounced once, twice—processing the protective rage he carried on my behalf. Evan's hands had gone still, no longer folding, resting.
They were waiting for me to tell them what I needed.
I didn't know yet.
But I knew some things about it.
I knew that whatever footage existed—the Zamboni, the chair, all of it—had been captured without my understanding of what it would become. I'd signed a release form. I'd agreed to be part of a story about the Storm. I hadn't agreed to be like a pinned frog, dissected for entertainment.
Adrian had made choices about what to film and what to send. He decided not to tell me. Maybe those choices came from fear. Maybe from love. Maybe some complicated tangle of both.
They were still making choices about me.
I looked down at my hands. Orange dust still clung to my fingertips—bright against the dim light.
On the frozen TV screen, the crying woman was still reaching. The walking man was still leaving.
I didn't need answers tonight. I only needed to know what I wasn't willing to accept.
I wasn't willing to be edited without consent.
I wasn't willing to be the punchline in someone else's joke.
"I'm okay," I said finally.
Jake's eyebrows shot up. "You're okay?"
"I'm not okay okay. I know where I am. I know what I'm not willing to let happen."
"And what's that?"
I looked at Jake and then Evan.
"I'm not going to let them decide who I am. Whatever footage exists, I get to have a say in it. And if the network thinks they can turn me into a joke without my input—" I stopped. Breathed. "They're going to find out I'm harder to edit than they think."
Jake's face split into a fierce grin.
"There he is," he said.
Evan stared at me. "You're not the mess you think you are. For the record."
I looked back at the frozen TV screen, the moment suspended, waiting for someone to press play.
Tomorrow, I'd have to ask questions I didn't want to ask. I might have to hear answers that would break something I wasn't ready to lose.
But tonight, I was here. In a room with people who wouldn't ask me to be less. Breathing air that didn't smell like anyone's shampoo. Thinking more clearly than I had in days.
Adrian was probably at his hotel, trying to decide.
The cheese dust glittered on my fingers like the world's least dignified war paint.
I left it there. Let them try to edit that out.