Inside Hudson Pickle

  The author is grateful for support from the Canada Council for the Arts. She also wishes to thank her critique partners (David Wright, Eileen Feldsott, Lawrence Tabak, Miriam Spitzer Franklin), Sara Wienke of The Alpha-1 Center, Amy Tompkins, Jennifer MacKinnon, and the amazing team at Kids Can Press.

  • • •

  KCP Fiction is an imprint of Kids Can Press

  ISBN 978-1-77138-952-5 (EPUB)

  Text © 2017 Yolanda Ridge

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Kids Can Press Ltd. or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Kids Can Press Ltd. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters (e.g., Flovent).

  Kids Can Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Media Development Corporation; the Ontario Arts Council; the Canada Council for the Arts; and the Government of Canada, through the CBF, for our publishing activity.

  Published in Canada and the U.S. by Kids Can Press Ltd.

  25 Dockside Drive, Toronto, ON M5A 0B5

  Kids Can Press is a Corus Entertainment Inc. company

  www.kidscanpress.com

  Edited by Jennifer Mackinnon

  Designed by Marie Bartholomew

  Cover illustration by Vidhya Nagarajan

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Ridge, Yolanda, 1973–, author

  Inside Hudson Pickle / written by Yolanda Ridge.

  ISBN 978-1-77138-620-3 (hardback)

  I. Title.

  PS8635.I374I58 2017 jC813’.6 C2016-906542-1

  INSIDE

  HUDSON

  PICKLE

  YOLANDA RIDGE

  KCP Fiction

  Chapter One

  “Hudson! We’re going out!” The panic in my mom’s voice cut through my bedroom door like a right winger splitting the defense.

  I glanced at the clock. Mom should still be cleaning up from dinner and packing lunches for tomorrow. I tossed my Sports Illustrated on the floor.

  “What are you talking about?” I yelled back. “I’m doing my homework!”

  The bedroom door burst open. Mom’s shiny red face appeared. “There’s been a fire,” she said. “Get your coat.”

  I felt a kick of adrenaline, the kind I used to get when Coach called my name for the starting lineup. “Fire?”

  “It’s Uncle Vic,” Mom said, her voice quavering.

  I rolled off the bed, thinking, This could be good. Excitement followed Uncle Vic like stink follows gym socks.

  Was it another one of his stunts? This one time he’d sat in a tree and played his guitar for forty-eight hours straight to protest clear-cut logging. He’d gotten a lot of attention for that one, thanks to a video that went viral.

  Or it could be something even crazier, like a run-in with the law. Uncle Vic had served time as a teenager, though I’d never gotten a straight answer on why. He’d also been arrested for disturbing the peace and obstruction of justice. I only know about that because I’d read it in the newspaper. It was stuck in the back pages of the entertainment section where they bury news about pseudo-famous local people.

  Nothing was too out there when it came to Uncle Vic, but he didn’t strike me as an arsonist.

  “For real? A fire?” I asked.

  “Yes, a real fire.” Mom exhaled hard, making her long blond bangs fan out like an umbrella. “And, yes, your uncle is fine.”

  “Oh, right.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Uncle Vic might be hurt. The guy was invincible. “So what’s the panic?”

  “We’ll talk in the car.” Mom was already bundled up in the oversize down jacket she’d been wearing since Labor Day.

  I grabbed my hoodie off the floor and followed her to the garage.

  “Calm down, Mom,” I said as she backed out of the driveway at twice her normal speed. Her normal speed was painfully slow, but still, she was starting to freak me out. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t really know. Vic just called and said there’d been a fire. He asked me to come and get him.”

  “A fire in his apartment?” Uncle Vic lived in a basement apartment near the center of town, miles away from our square box in the ’burbs.

  “Yes, in his apartment,” Mom replied, her eyes fixed on the straight, flat road ahead.

  “How’d it happen?”

  “He put the kettle on and then fell asleep.” She gripped the steering wheel so tight her knuckles looked like they were about to burst out of her black leather gloves. “That’s all I know, Hudson. We’ll find out the rest when we get there.”

  I slouched into the seat and turned on the radio. The droning twang of Mom’s country music station filled the car. “The hockey game should be on.” I fiddled with the controls. “It’s already started …”

  “Just keep it low,” Mom said without taking her eyes off the road.

  “Fine.”

  She drove to Uncle Vic’s place like she was racing in the Indy 500. I kept glancing at the speedometer as I tried to concentrate on the play-by-play.

  A rookie fumbled a pass.

  Another player went offside on what sounded like an easy breakaway.

  I gritted my teeth, wishing I could stream the NHL preseason. Instead, I was stuck listening to one of the many varsity games that flooded the airwaves in this hockey-crazed town. My jaw clenched even harder as the commentator announced a line change. When would I stop imagining the sound of my own name floating over the radio waves?

  Pickle shoots … He scores!

  Never going to happen.

  •••

  When we arrived at Uncle Vic’s, Mom had to park a block away — an obvious sign that something big was going down. In the sprawling town of Bluster, tucked away in the least populated county of Western New York, you never have to park a block away from anything, ever.

  As I ducked out of the car, the foul smell of burning, wet wood and melted plastic hit me like a punch. It reminded me of the time Trev and I had torched our collection of Star Wars action figures. They hadn’t gone up in flames, but they’d bubbled and then melted, producing dark trails of smoke. That had triggered an asthma attack major enough to put me in the hospital — which was the only thing that had saved me from being grounded for a year.

  Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances crowded the road in front of Uncle Vic’s, blocking my view of the house. I looked up but couldn’t see any flames — just clouds of smoke and steam reflecting the flashing yellow and red lights of the emergency vehicles. The sirens were silent.

  Pulling my hood around my neck so it covered my nose and mouth, I took a breath and rushed to catch up with Mom. The last thing I needed was an asthma attack. Childhood asthma was supposed to disappear now that I had officially entered my teenage years. But if anyone was going to beat the odds — the odds of something bad happening, that is, not something good — it would be me.

  “You okay?” Mom asked as I stepped up beside her.

  “Yeah,” I m
umbled through the fabric, even though my chest didn’t feel right. It was tight. Asthma-attack tight. I felt the pocket of my hoodie for an inhaler. Nothing.

  She stopped. “Maybe you should wait in the car.”

  “I’m fine.” I grabbed her arm and dragged her up the street. “Let’s just find Uncle Vic.”

  We found him sitting in the back of an ambulance. With one hand, he held an oxygen mask up to his face. The other hand held together the ends of a blanket, which was wrapped haphazardly around his shoulders. His legs were bare, and his feet dangled above the ground like a little kid’s in a grown-up chair.

  “Oh my god, Vic,” Mom said when she saw him. “You must be frozen.”

  Uncle Vic lifted the mask away from his scruffy goatee and smiled. “I’m fine, sis. Like I told you on the phone.”

  “Yes, but …” Mom glanced at the old Victorian house across the road. “I didn’t expect so much … damage.”

  The tightness in my chest slowly started to relax its grip as I stared at the house. A floodlight from one of the fire trucks made the place look like a Halloween haunted house. Smoke billowed out the windows and rose up from the pointed roof. The wooden slats on the sides of the house, once flat and blue, now looked like charred campfire logs.

  “Hey, kid,” said Uncle Vic. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said casually, even though I was kind of psyched to be there. I know it’s twisted, but being at the scene of a fire was exciting. Much more exciting than a night at home: me upstairs, watching hockey on my laptop while playing Minecraft on my tablet, and Mom downstairs, muttering at the TV as if the characters on Downton Abbey could actually hear her.

  A paramedic appeared from inside the ambulance and took the oxygen mask from Uncle Vic. “Breathing okay?” she asked.

  “Better,” he replied.

  “I’m going to check your vitals one more time,” she said.

  While the paramedic took Uncle Vic’s temperature and blood pressure, I watched firefighters move in and out of the house with hoses, axes and a bunch of equipment I didn’t recognize. I’d been fascinated by firefighters as a kid. What they were doing seemed a lot more interesting than standing around on the sidelines like a pylon.

  Uncle Vic coughed a loud, rumbling cough, as though lava was going to come exploding out of him. It was a cough I recognized.

  “I think we better take you in,” the paramedic said as she pulled out her stethoscope.

  “I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Uncle Vic said, trying to catch his breath. “I have coughing fits all the time. It has nothing to do with the fire.”

  “Are you a smoker?”

  “Not anymore.”

  The paramedic pushed her stethoscope under the folds of his blanket and listened to his chest and back. “Your lungs sound crackly. Have you had a respiratory infection lately?”

  “No. I mean … yeah.”

  “You had a cold?” asked Mom. “When?”

  “Last week. My nose was running like a tap. And my throat was so hoarse I ended a gig after a single set — even though my fans seemed to think I sounded sexier than ever.” Uncle Vic winked at the paramedic.

  “There must be something nasty going around,” Mom said. “Hudson’s been sick, too.”

  “If it was upper respiratory, your lungs should be clear.” The paramedic frowned. “It could be the smoke —”

  “I feel fine, really, and I don’t want to see any doctors.” Uncle Vic put his hand on the paramedic’s arm. “My sister works at the hospital. I’m going home with her. She’ll keep an eye on me.”

  The paramedic looked at Mom. “His vitals are good. He’s stable so I can release him to you. But I think he should get checked out if that cough doesn’t clear up soon.”

  “I’m just an ultrasound tech,” Mom said. “But I work at Mercy General. I’ll make sure he gets a thorough examination.”

  “Thanks, sis.” Uncle Vic turned to me. “Looks like you have a new bunkmate, kid.”

  A shiver of excitement ran down my spine. Having Uncle Vic around would certainly stir things up — and take a little of Mom’s overprotective attention away from me.

  Mom sighed. “It’ll be a bit of a squeeze …”

  A deep voice interrupted her. “Excuse me? Mr. Pickle?” It was one of the firefighters. He wore full protective gear and a large oxygen tank on his back. Black soot covered his face, blending in with the tight, dark curls on his head. “Are you Victor Pickle?”

  “In the flesh,” said Uncle Vic.

  “Sorry to meet you under these unfortunate circumstances.” The firefighter pulled off his right glove. “E. O. Bouchier.”

  Uncle Vic shook the firefighter’s hand enthusiastically. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to give you an update. The county fire department accomplished fire control within approximately fifty minutes of being on the scene.” He paused to consult the clipboard he had tucked under the left arm of his bulky jacket. “Sixty-three minutes after your upstairs neighbor made the 9-1-1 call. Everyone was evacuated, and no one sustained significant injury.”

  Uncle Vic raised his eyebrows. “That’s good, right?”

  The firefighter cleared his throat. “Yes. But the damage is extensive. I’m afraid you won’t be able to return home for a while.” He handed Uncle Vic a business card and confirmed his contact information. “We’ll be in touch. This your family here?”

  Uncle Vic nodded.

  The firefighter acknowledged me with a smile. “It must be hard to see your dad in this situation.”

  “He’s not my dad,” I blurted out, startled by the assumption. It’s true that Uncle Vic was the closest thing I had to a dad. Still, the thought of him being some kind of father figure was absurd. He might be old enough, but he definitely wasn’t mature enough. And besides that, we looked absolutely nothing alike. “Definitely not my dad,” I repeated, shaking my head for emphasis.

  “I’m sorry. I just —”

  Mom jumped in before the firefighter could consult his clipboard again. “He’s my brother. Hudson’s uncle. We’re all the family he has here. He’ll be staying with us.”

  “It’s lucky he has a place to go to. The homeowners have insurance, but it might not cover tenants.” He glanced over at a couple with three young kids, huddled together next to a police car. I recognized them as the family who lived upstairs.

  Mom glared at Uncle Vic. “Don’t you have your own insurance?”

  He ignored her. “Can I go in and get some stuff?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be in touch to let you know when it’s safe.” The firefighter flipped down the face shield attached to his red helmet. Case closed.

  “Okay.” Uncle Vic hopped out of the ambulance. As he did, the blanket slid off his shoulders.

  The firefighter turned away.

  Mom gasped.

  I bit my lip to stop from laughing.

  Uncle Vic was wearing nothing but his underwear.

  And I’m not talking boxers.

  Chapter Two

  “Hudson Pickle?”

  My back stiffened on reflex. Tearing my eyes away from the window, I faced the front of the classroom.

  “Hudson?” Ms. Lavender repeated. “Are you with us?”

  It took me a second to remember what class I was in. Career & Tech. Right. “Of course,” I lied. It’s not like I could tell her that replaying the scene of last night’s fire was at least a billion times more interesting than her lesson. Who cares about choosing the right career in seventh grade?

  “Then answer the question,” said Ms. Lavender.

  I swallowed. “Question?”

  “Your profession?”

  I still wasn’t sure what she wanted, so I just said the first thing that popped into my head. “Firefighter.”

 
A tinkering of laughter drifted forward from the back of the room. What had I gotten myself into?

  “Very well.” Ms. Lavender wrote something on her clipboard. “Anyone else? Willow Flores?”

  I ducked down so the rest of my row could see over my head again. Not that anyone was looking at Ms. Lavender. All eyes were glued on Willow, who sat at attention in the desk next to mine.

  “I can’t decide between mail carrier and sports broadcaster,” Willow answered.

  More laughter from the back of the room.

  Ms. Lavender sighed. “Those are two very different professions, Willow.”

  “You want to be a mailman?” said Aidan Pace. I could tell it was him, even though he was sitting behind me with the other eighth-grade boys, who were now laughing harder than ever. “Willow can’t be a mailman, even if she is the tallest girl to ever live.”

  “That’s enough, Aidan.”

  “But Ms. Lavender, I’m just thinking of Willow. If she becomes a mailman, it might make her crazy. It might make her go postal or something.”

  “Aidan …”

  Willow crossed her arms over her chest. “Mail carrier it is, Ms. Lavender.”

  I watched Willow out of the corner of my eye. She kept her chin pointed forward, jaw set. I knew that look on her face: determination. I knew it from the board games we’d played in kindergarten and our rounds of tag at recess. I knew it from the face-offs we’d taken against each other in house league. Of course, all of that was before I moved up a level in hockey and down a grade in school.

  I didn’t really know Willow anymore. But she was obviously the same girl who’d sunk my battleship and captured my snow fort. Gutsy move, standing up to Aidan like that.

  •••

  “Hey! Wait up!” I called to Trev when the bell finally rang, putting an end to Career & Tech and the school day.

  Trev didn’t slow down as he filed out of the classroom ahead of me. Not that I’d really expected him to.

  “Not cool, Hudson,” he hissed when I finally caught up to him. “You need to pay attention. Those eighth graders are always looking for a reason to rip seventh graders apart. You’re lucky Aidan didn’t pick on you instead of Willow.”