I paused the frame.
It was good footage. A twenty-three-year-old hockey player with chaos in his veins and steadiness in his hands, teaching a rookie how to breathe.
The network would never use it.
I scrubbed forward. Found the scrimmage sequence I'd watched a dozen times.
Pickle read a play two beats before it happened. Moving not toward the puck, but toward where the puck was going to be.
He was good. Hockey-good. The kind of instinctive play that coaches dreamed about and couldn't teach.
The network would never use that either.
I kept scrolling. Found the clips I'd been avoiding.
The water bottle incident. Pickle stammering through his intro—I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons—then shooting water directly into his own face. Someone had already flagged it in the review folder:HIGHLIGHT - comedic potential - KEEP.
They'd added a note:Can we get more like this?
I spotted the Zamboni sequence. Pickle crouching by the blade assembly, fingers tracing bolt heads with precision. His hands trembled, and his jaw clenched. It was anxiety externalized.
Finally, the worst one. It was sideline footage, practice day two. Pickle alone by the glass, hands pressed to his chest. Rubbing hard, working at something invisible. His shoulders curved inward. His jaw slackened for half a second before he caught himself.
Eleven seconds. I'd watched it thirty times.
I'd also sent it to Naomi with the rest of the batch.
Raw footage for review. Will flag selects by the end of the week.
As if those eleven seconds of Pickle's unguarded exhaustion were only data points in a larger file.
I closed the laptop and pushed back from the desk.
Two hours and twelve minutes.
The footage was gone. Not deleted—it could never be deleted once it left my hard drive—but it was out of my hands. I'd framed the shots and pressed record. I'd uploaded them withprofessional efficiency and told myself I was playing a long game.
The truth was simpler: I'd done my job. My employers defined that as turning Pickle into content.
Meme-able, Naomi had said.Multiple times.
I didn't mean to open the old files, but something pulled me back. It was a masochistic impulse dressed up as a professional habit. The folder was buried three levels deep:Milwaukee Arts Doc - 2020 - FINAL.
I hadn't opened it in two years.
The thumbnails loaded slowly. Faces I half-recognized. Venues I'd forgotten. And then: Theo.
Not a single shot. Dozens. Hundreds.
I clicked one at random. It was a rehearsal space, with late-afternoon light. Theo sat at an upright piano, back to the camera. The shot held for ninety seconds. No cut. No movement. Only his hands on the keys.
I hadn't remembered choosing to hold it for that long.
Next, I found what I'd been looking for without knowing I was hunting for it. Timestamp: three weeks into the project. A sound check. Theo passing through the frame—background, not subject.
Except my camera followed him.
I'd panned the camera right, tracking his movement, focusing on his profile a beat too long before snapping back. The motion was almost imperceptible, but it was there—instinctive.
