"They involve you because—" He stopped. Pressed his palms against his eyes, then dropped them. "Because the footage. The footage I sent them. It's you."
"The footage of what?"
"Everything. The Zamboni. When you check the bolts—I filmed that. I didn't realize at first what it was, but I kept filming and they—" He swallowed, and I watched his Adam's apple move up and down. "The chair at The Drop. You are on your hands and knees, fixing the legs. The water bottle thing, when you sprayed water in your face."
My shoulders tensed.
"You filmed that," I said. My voice sounded far away. "My—the things I do when I'm—"
"I didn't understand at first. I thought it was just—you being you. And then I realized, but by then I'd already sent the footage, and now they—"
"What do they want to do with it?"
He didn't answer.
"Adrian. What do they want to do with it?"
His face crumpled. "They want to make you into a joke. The edit they sent me—they added sound effects. Cartoon noises. They're calling it—" His voice broke. "They're calling itThunder Bay's Favorite Disaster. They want to turn you into a meme."
I should have seen it coming, but I didn't.
A joke—me.
Everything stopped.
The fluorescent light kept buzzing. Adrian kept talking—I watched his mouth moving, and I heard but didn't comprehend something about fighting back, counter-offers, and plans. My pulse was too loud in my ears.
I could imagine the film. My hands on the Zamboni, checking the bolts for the seventeenth time because my brain wouldn't stop screaming that something was loose—cartoon boing sounds layered over the footage. Laugh track. People on the internet sharing it and commenting, "lmaooo this guy." They'd include the moment when I dropped to my knees at The Drop, slow it down, and loop it while strangers who'd never held a hockey stick decided I was pathetic.
The Zamboni. The chair legs. Every private ritual I used to hold myself together—all of it filmed. All of it sent. All of it edited for maximum laugh potential.
Thunder Bay's Favorite Disaster.
Less than an hour ago, I'd been on the ice. Reading plays before they happened. Setting up Jake for the goal of the period. Finally feeling like I belonged.
None of that would matter. People wouldn't see the cross-ice feed. They'd see me crawling under tables. My worst moments edited into entertainment, stripped of context, packaged for strangers to laugh at.
They'd see what they always saw when they looked at me.
Frantic. Exhausting. A punchline waiting to happen.
"Pickle."
Adrian's voice. Close. He reached for my arm.
I stepped back.
"You knew." My voice came out strange—flat and quiet. "When I came to your room this morning. When I got on my knees for you. When you told me to trust you." I looked at him, and I didn'trecognize anything I saw. "You already knew what they were doing with my face. And you let me—"
"I was trying to fix it before you had to see—"
"You were deciding for me." The word tore out of me. "Deciding what I could know. What I was strong enough to handle. You were managing me, Adrian. Like I'm a bomb that needs defusing. Like I'm too fragile to hear the truth about my own goddamn life."
"That's not—"
"Isn't it?" My entire body shook, full-body tremors. I couldn't stop them.
"You watched me fall apart a hundred different ways. You filmed it. You sent it to people who want to hurt me. And then you held me in your bed and told me to trust you."
