Inside Hudson Pickle Read online

  “I’m outta here,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll see you in the car.”

  Sage looked at me — concerned. Her eyes were brown and deep. The rushing sound of blood thumped through my ears. I looked down at the floor and then happened to glance at Uncle Vic’s guitar case with the white powder on it …

  I charged toward the door, and somehow my foot connected with the guitar’s black hard-shell case on my way by. Pain shot through the toe pushing at the end of my high-top.

  Everything in the room — the movement, the chatter, the music — ground to a halt.

  Sage stood there, scratching her head. “Are you okay?”

  I rolled my ankle to make sure it wasn’t sprained. “I think so,” I said, even though I knew I was anything but okay. Only the injury wasn’t physical, it was emotional. It seemed like Uncle Vic and his friends were up to something. And I didn’t like it.

  “Good,” said Sage.

  Everyone else went back to what they were doing.

  Uncle Vic picked up his guitar case and cleared his throat. “Guess we’d better hit the road, eh, kid?”

  As Sage kissed Uncle Vic on the cheek, I shuffled out the door as quietly as I could.

  A few people called out “Bye, Hudson” behind me. I wondered if one of them was Sage. But having made such a fool of myself, I knew she’d probably never speak to me again. No doubt she was second-guessing the idea of including me in … whatever.

  I dragged my fist along the cracked walls and chipped paint that lined the hallway. Pulling on the rickety handrail a lot harder than necessary, I took the stairs two at a time to gain distance from Uncle Vic. But when I got to the car, I had no choice but to wait for him. Standing there in the middle of the parking lot, I tried to sort out whether I was onto something or actually on something.

  “You want to talk about what just happened in there?” asked Uncle Vic as he unlocked the car. “You were acting pretty strange.”

  “No.” I slumped into my seat, trying to figure out how to deal with my suspicions. Even though the clues were there, did they really add up? It was still hard to believe that Uncle Vic was into drugs. But what else could explain his weird behavior?

  As we pulled away, I looked up at the low-rise and thought I saw Sage’s profile in the studio window. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  “Sage? No.” Uncle Vic smiled. “No. It’s not like that. The band? We’re like family.”

  Jealousy jabbed me like the edge of a stick blade. No wonder he no longer paid much attention to me. “Then why don’t you just go and live with them?” The shot was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  “Look, I know I’ve crowded you out since I moved in. But I’ve enjoyed hanging with you, kid …” Uncle Vic rubbed his chin thoughtfully and took his time choosing his words. “I know I haven’t always been the best uncle. Or brother. But I’ve always loved you guys more than anything. Family really is the most important thing …”

  “Then how come you’re never around unless you need us?” And how come you’re hiding things from me? I wanted to ask the second question — the more important question — out loud. But I didn’t.

  “Well, I guess that’s because I also love to play guitar. Which means I’m on the road a lot. And lately I’ve been really into this sustainability thing. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it affected you so much, Hudson.”

  Uncle Vic waited for me to respond. I didn’t. After a few minutes, he turned up the radio. “You have to check out the solo on this track. Pure genius.”

  Music filled the car as Uncle Vic hummed and drummed along. I reviewed what had gone down in the studio. What was the deal with all this sustainability stuff? I’d always assumed that his activism was just an angle he used to get publicity. Maybe that was part of the problem — I didn’t know him any better than he knew me.

  “Have you always done stuff for the environment?” I asked when the song was over and the station had cut to commercial.

  Uncle Vic nodded. “Since college. It started with your mom’s campus greening campaign.”

  Another something — and someone — I knew very little about. Suddenly, I saw an opening in the play. Maybe a backdoor pass could get me behind Mom’s rock-solid defense. “Mom was part of a campus greening campaign?”

  “Not just part of it; she organized the whole thing. Met with the college administration and convinced them to make a lot of changes: banning pesticides, forcing the cafeterias to stop using disposable dishes and cutlery, setting aside land for community gardens —”

  “Mom did all that?”

  “Yup. Got me into the campaign when she asked the band to play at a fundraising concert.”

  “Scream Soda?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You mentioned it to E. O.”

  “Oh.” Uncle Vic lowered the sun visor.

  “What about my dad?” I hadn’t planned to ask, but before I knew it, the words were out there, and I couldn’t take them back. I knew they’d all met in college.

  “Your dad?” Uncle Vic took his eyes off the road to look at me, even though we were driving through the busy section of town, which led to the freeway.

  “Was he involved, too?”

  Uncle Vic turned his attention back to driving just in time to see the light change ahead of us. He jammed on the brakes. The car came to a skidding stop in front of the red light.

  We sat there in silence as a dad pushing a stroller stepped around our front bumper in the crosswalk, glaring at Uncle Vic through the windshield. The light turned green, but Uncle Vic didn’t move. The car behind us honked.

  “All right, all right!” Uncle Vic said, shaking his fist in the rearview mirror.

  When the car was rolling again, I took a chance and repeated my question. “Was my dad part of the campus greening campaign?”

  “Not so much.” Uncle Vic pursed his lips together. “Listen, kid, if you want to know about your dad, you’ll have to talk to your mom.”

  “But you know how she is —”

  “I know, kid. I’ll try to get her to open up, but it’s going to take patience. She’ll tell you someday. Everything happens in its own time.”

  I knew by the set of Uncle Vic’s jaw that there was no point asking any more questions. I banged my head back against the headrest and kept my eyes on the road.

  The secrets were piling up faster than a heap of dirty laundry: activist mom, missing dad, criminal uncle … I needed to know more.

  Why did nothing seem to happen in my time?

  Chapter Eleven

  I had a weird dream that night — weird because I remembered it and weird because it wasn’t about sports. Uncle Vic was on stage playing drums (also weird because I’d fallen asleep to the soft strum of his guitar). In the dream, his drumsticks were on fire, burning the words Scream Soda onto the side of a drum as he played.

  As soon as I woke up, I googled Scream Soda. Four million hits, mostly about some kind of rum cocktail. I tried Scream Soda + music band and filtered by language and location, but I still ended up with a ton of results. I started searching through each page, hoping to find something about Uncle Vic’s college band.

  There were two reasons. The first, to research Uncle Vic’s connection to drugs. The second, because I wanted to know more about my dad.

  Here’s the sum total of what I already knew: Mom had met my dad after he formed a college band with Uncle Vic. Mom started dating my dad when she was in med school. Mom dropped out of med school when they decided to have a family. (I’m not sure how much planning went into this decision, but whatever.) My dad left Mom after Darwyn died.

  That was more than ten years ago, and no one had heard from him since. As far as I knew.

  When I was younger, I asked about him all the time. Mom gave me tiny bits of information but never his name. I’d stopped
asking questions because Mom got so weird about it. And because it didn’t seem to matter much. Until now.

  I surfed for over an hour but didn’t find anything — just a bunch of garbage about song lyrics, cream soda and Ozzy Osbourne. I was looking at the website of an electro-rock band from England when I heard a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Hudson?”

  I slammed my laptop shut. “What do you want, Mom?”

  “Just wondering if you’re coming down for breakfast. Uncle Vic made pancakes.”

  As soon as I heard Uncle Vic’s name, I knew I’d missed the obvious. I needed to add Victor Pickle to my list of search words. But there was no way I could do it now. Mom would be suspicious if I missed breakfast.

  “Hudson?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure, I’ll be right down.”

  “Okay, see you in a minute,” Mom said through the door.

  I pulled on some new sweatpants, which were already too short to wear in public, and stomped down the stairs. Uncle Vic was sitting at the dining table — wearing his own robe for a change — whistling as he glanced through the paper. In front of him sat a steaming stack of pancakes and a bottle of syrup.

  Mom came out of the kitchen carrying the coffee pot. “You okay, Hudson? I heard you up pretty early this morning.”

  “I’m fine.” I sat down and filled my plate with food, disappointed (but not surprised) by the lack of bacon.

  Mom filled her mug and then Uncle Vic’s. “Lots of homework?”

  I nodded as I chewed. I was waiting for Uncle Vic to say something about the damage I’d done to his guitar. Its case was hard — my big toe still stung from the impact — but not exactly designed for full-contact protection.

  “You got some good info from E. O. yesterday, didn’t ya, kid?” he asked instead.

  I swallowed. “Yep.”

  “Sounds like there’s lots of damage to the house.” Mom sat down and pointed to the newspaper at the far end of the table. It was open to a page with a headline that read, House Fire Suspicious.

  The actual article was only a few lines long. It quoted E. O. as saying, “Those old places burn hot and fast.” He also complained about the fire department’s lack of resources to investigate the fire properly. While the homeowners were described as upstanding citizens, the article made Uncle Vic sound like a shady musician with a criminal record.

  I glanced at Mom, who was pouring syrup over her pancakes, carefully, in a spiral pattern. She’d obviously read the article already. Had they discussed it? Argued about it?

  “Does this piss you off?” I asked Uncle Vic.

  “All publicity is good publicity.” Uncle Vic picked up his coffee and then put it down again without taking a sip. He was already finished eating. And Mom thought I ate fast. No wonder he was always complaining about stomachaches. “And I’m sure they’ll be able to complete the investigation now that you’re on the case.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows. “Hudson?”

  Uncle Vic smiled at me. “Kid’s really in deep with the whole firefighting thing.”

  “In what way?”

  “I found a burned-up dish towel,” I mumbled through a mouthful of sticky syrup. “Underneath the stove.”

  “Is that some kind of clue?”

  “E. O. seemed to think so,” said Uncle Vic.

  Mom wrapped both hands around her white coffee mug, her fingers covering the red lettering: You don’t scare me, I’m a hockey mom. “How did they miss it?”

  I shrugged. “It was really far under the stove, and it blended into the floor. I only noticed it because it’s the same as ours. Remember the big economy pack you bought?”

  “Yes, I remember.” She took a sip. “I also remember that you never paid me back for your half, Vic.”

  Uncle Vic ignored the accusation. “The kid would make a good detective,” he said, trying to imitate E. O.

  I felt a rush of pride, suddenly picturing myself in the uniform E. O. had worn when we first met.

  “Great job,” Mom said, still clutching at the mug like her life depended on the heat it provided. “And you got lots of information for your project?”

  I nodded. “I’m getting pretty into it. Finding out lots of cool things about firefighting. Enough to make me think that being a firefighter could be in my future. Maybe Career and Tech isn’t such a waste of time after all.”

  The wrinkles on Mom’s face tightened. She chewed slowly through her first bite of pancake, as though she had a mouthful of hockey tape instead of syrupy, buttermilky goodness.

  Uncle Vic pushed his chair back from the table. “E. O. asked a couple of questions about the old days, when me and the band got those threats. Remember?”

  Mom put down her fork. “Of course,” she said quietly.

  “Got me and Hudson talking about college. The kid has some questions.”

  “About college?” A look of relief crossed Mom’s face. “This career and technology elective sure has you thinking a lot about the future, Hudson.”

  “Not my future,” I said slowly. Uncle Vic had given me an opening. It was up to me to take the shot. “Your past.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked sharply. The side of her mouth was twitching madly.

  “The kid wants to know about his dad,” said Uncle Vic, ignoring the anger in Mom’s voice.

  She stared at the pancakes on her plate as if they’d just jumped up and slapped her in the face.

  Uncle Vic and I stared at Mom.

  No one spoke.

  And then Uncle Vic stood abruptly and grabbed his guitar case from the corner of the room. The scuff mark from my high-top was gone. So was the powder. “I have to go. The band’s rehearsing. I’ll be gone the rest of the day.”

  I watched him retreat into the hallway, wishing I could escape, too. I didn’t necessarily want to go with him, although seeing Sage wouldn’t be bad. I just didn’t want to be left alone with Mom. I knew he’d tried to help, but all he’d done was put her on the defense. I’d never get anything out of her now.

  I scratched my arm — like it was an itch that was irritating me instead of Uncle Vic — and stared at Mom’s hockey mug. I remembered the Christmas it had appeared in her stocking: a present from Santa. She’d opened it with fake surprise but hadn’t been able to hide her delight. Mom had always been my biggest hockey fan.

  “What are you up to today, Hudson?” she asked when she was done eating. The pattern of syrup was still traceable on the half-nibbled pancakes that littered her plate.

  I shrugged.

  “Want to come shopping with me? We’re going through a lot of food with Uncle Vic here.”

  “I have a ton of homework,” I said, “and I need to practice.” I shot an imaginary ball into an imaginary basket above Mom’s head.

  She sighed.

  Heaviness spread through me as I thought about all those early-morning hockey practices. Me with my protein bars. Her with a travel mug of coffee and a muffin. Mom had never missed a practice or a game. And we hadn’t spent much time together since I’d hung up the skates.

  But I had work to do.

  As soon as the dishes were done, I raced back to my room. My new Google search found an article about a blues band that had played at a bar in Rochester. It wasn’t a glowing review, but it did have a list of the band members: Victor Pickle, Fritz Baneck, Chris Lyons and Simon Sadowski.

  I tried googling some of the names of the other band members, but that got boring really fast. Before I knew it, I was googling Victor Pickle again. I started looking at articles that might link him to drugs, but soon I got distracted by other things. His Facebook page. His Instagram account. The Sonic Energy website.

  I limited my search to Google images and found a picture of Uncle Vic sitting on a tricycle at a Critical Mass ride, wearing a Sonic Energy T-shirt. I looked at the pict
ure closely, trying to see if Sage was somewhere in the background. What kind of bike did she ride?

  The more websites I visited, the more I got to know my uncle. And the more mysterious he became.

  His passion for music and the environment was obvious. It was plastered all over the internet like car ads at a hockey rink. But arsonist and drug dealer? I couldn’t find anything that even hinted at that.

  The fire was probably related to the dish towel, but that didn’t mean it was accidental. Could Uncle Vic have started the fire for publicity? He’d certainly pulled a lot of stunts in the past, though I couldn’t see his angle here.

  And if it was accidental, we still didn’t have an explanation for how he’d slept through it.

  That brought me back to drugs. I really didn’t want to believe that Uncle Vic could be a user or a dealer, but what about the weird texts from Sage? And the stuff he’d tried to remove from his apartment during the fire? All the strange behavior?

  I was about to give up, when the eighty-seventh search result caught my eye. It was an archived two-line article about a group of musicians arrested for drug possession: Victor Pickle, Simon Sadowski, Emile Aguillard and Joseph Novak.

  Joseph Novak. The name was just slightly more familiar than the rest. Like the answer on a multiple-choice quiz that sounds just a little less wrong than the others, even though you don’t understand the question.

  Joseph Novak. My dad?

  Chapter Twelve

  I spent the rest of the weekend wondering how I could dig up more information about my mysterious — and potentially criminal — family. The internet didn’t provide much. People’s lives weren’t displayed on the web back in the old days, at least not like they are now. The more I searched, the more I ran into dead ends. When my eyes started to blur from staring at the computer screen, I shot some hoops and prepared for my interview with Willow.

  For some reason, I wanted to impress her — either by acing the assignment or totally blowing it off. Since I was still kind of psyched about the fire details E. O. had given me (and because I didn’t want any more notes going home to Mom), I went for the ace. So I was kind of bummed when the interview didn’t happen on Monday. Instead we had another guest speaker, who bored us with details of how his mining company extracts salt from rock. Yawn.