2025 Short Story & Essay Contest: Honorable Mention, High School Short Story Contest
By Lila Grosko
I close my eyes and listen to the car rolling into the driveway, the sound masking the low growl of my empty stomach. I squeeze Christopher Ferret as hard as I can, inhaling his airy, clean scent. It feels as if he is squeezing me back, wrapping his fluffy paws around my back to protect me.
I know this is impossible, of course; Ryan Hyden told me so. He laughed and said that Chris is filled with stuffing and has no muscles. He explained that you need muscles to pick someone up, and then he swung me around the living room and dropped me onto the couch. Ryan was Mommy’s last boyfriend, and he smelled like he had been in a fire. I remember his name because it sounds like a hydrant, which I learned is what firemen use to put out house fires. I learned that because my mom set our house on fire last month. The name Ryan Hyden also rhymes, kinda. Ms. Rena told me that words that kind of rhyme are called slant rhymes.
I fumble with the covers on my bed and turn myself over so that I am lying on my stomach. I do this sometimes when the emptiness in my belly becomes too much. It helps with that cold feeling that seems to grow up past my ribs and into my throat.
I hear the back door opening and closing and the sound of voices moving into my kitchen. Three, I guess, one belonging to mommy and two others I don’t recognize. I lean over the bed and push my ear against the door, listening more closely. My mommy’s voice echoes through the house, which is only one and a half stories.
The half comes from her lofted bedroom, which she built herself two years ago. My mommy was much younger two years ago, and you can hear it in her words. These days, her throat makes raspy noises after every sentence, and she coughs 63 times a day. That’s not an exact number, of course, just a rough estimate.
I ask Chris if my mommy is calling for me, but he tells me she is not. I’ve asked him this before, because he has much better hearing than me.
One cool fact is that ferrets can hear earthquakes coming before they happen.
Chris tells me that Mommy is calling for a pill or a bill or a thrill, but he isn’t sure which. I close my eyes again because I know it must be late, though I don’t have a clock on my nightstand.
The growling in my stomach has gotten louder, and it’s impossible to ignore. I am well aware that I haven’t had anything to eat since my dinner last night. On Thursday nights, my mommy’s shift ends at eight, and she comes straight home. She always cooks us peanut butter sandwiches with English muffins and extra crunchy peanut butter. Chris much prefers jelly sandwiches, but he never complains because he doesn’t want to hurt my mommy’s feelings.
My mommy comes home later on Friday nights, and she likes to bring many people with her. When I wake up, I get to meet them, usually because they are sleeping on my bookbag or my laundry. One time I found one of them in our fireplace. When she woke up, she explained to me that it was warmer there, though I’m not sure why because we haven’t used it in years. The woman, who looked more like a girl to me, was covered in black dust, and I laughed at her. She just looked silly, and I couldn’t help it. When she looked down at her blackened clothes, she laughed too, at first. After a few seconds, though, her smile disappeared and she raised her arm up. I thought she was going to try dusting herself off, but instead she punched me. It wasn’t very hard, and Chris kissed my cheek where it happened every night until the bruise went away. I was so grateful that he did that, and I gave him half of my Pop-Tart as a thank you. Chris didn’t eat it, and Ms. Rena said it was probably because ferrets prefer eating rabbits. I told her I couldn’t feed Chris a rabbit because I have a stuffed bunny named Quinn Hare, and that felt wrong.
The hunger has become too much, and I turn myself over, getting out of bed. I need to eat something. Usually, Mommy brings home stale pastries on Friday nights from her work because they can no longer sell them. Closing my eyes, I can almost see the brown paper bag, sitting on our countertop, surrounded by Mommy’s friends. I picture myself opening my bedroom door, taking the 39 steps it takes to get to the kitchen, and snatching the baggy off the counter. In this dream, with a wave by fairy godmother Christopher Ferret, the stale pastries inside the bag have transformed into a delicious picnic with jelly pancakes, jelly toast, and jelly pie. Yelling from Mommy’s friends snaps me out of my dream, reminding me that the kitchen is filled with strangers who could hurt Chris and me. We have to stay in the bedroom, where we are safe. Chris hands me a plastic loaf of bread from my play bin, and we pretend to eat it in silence. It will hold me over until morning.
When I am tired, my eyes water, which is a trait I got from my mom. I know this because the only time she ever cries is late at night, usually on days she doesn’t bring people home. She cries up in her loft, where she thinks I cannot hear her if my door is closed. Chris can hear her, though, and he always tells me. He tells me that the sounds she makes are not like when Freddy McDonough falls off the monkey bars at school. She isn’t wailing or screaming; instead, she is talking. This confuses Chris and me because she has nobody to talk to. She has no Chris Ferret, no Quinn Hare, and certainly no Reyna Rhino. But, nevertheless, Mommy talks while she cries, asking questions to her pillow and her dresser and her comforter. Chris reports that Mommy only sometimes makes sense, asking for forgiveness but never specifying for what or for help but never from whom.
Tonight, I am hungry and tired enough that my tears fall onto Chris, but he doesn’t complain. He just hugs me tighter, or at least that’s what it feels like. My mommy and the men she brought home begin singing loudly. Chris whispers that it is a lullaby, and I drift to sleep.
I wake up feeling hungrier and more exhausted than the night before. As it got later, more voices seemed to appear downstairs. They would talk for hours, and then there would be periods of silence. The silence should make it easier to sleep, but it scares me, not knowing what is going on. At least when they’re yelling, I know they’re still alive.
I am craving a croissant, and I can tell Chris is hungry too. His eyes have that funny look that makes me think he might just eat me.
The adults sleep until one or two on Saturdays because none of them have jobs to get up for. My mommy does, though, and she leaves before the sun is up, coming back to the house after her first job around noon. It is exhausting work, she tells me, and when she gets home, she always goes straight to the loft to go back to sleep.
Ms. Rena taught us about nocturnal animals like raccoons, and I’ve decided my mommy must be one. Just like my mommy, raccoons leave their babies at night to find food and drink. The problem is that raccoons are opportunistic omnivores, which means they eat whatever is available to them. That’s why they end up in the trash bins. I asked Ms. Rena if raccoons like eating trash, and she told me she didn’t know. She said she guessed that they don’t like the taste, but they have nothing to compare it to, and they’re used to it by now. Ms. Rena explained that raccoons are nocturnal because their predators are asleep at night, which makes it easier to find and bring food back to their young. That’s one way that raccoons are different from my mommy, because I don’t think that she’s scared of coyotes and wolves, and she rarely brings food home.
I lift my door up slightly as I exit my room, careful to keep it from squeaking. I creep into the kitchen, and I’m surprised to see only one man sprawled on the carpet. He looks very peaceful, his mouth open slightly and his arms wrapped around himself.
I recognize him as a good friend of my mommy’s. His name is Danny Rout, and he has a memorable face, probably because his eyes are the color of a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher. He is nice, too; he always smiles at me and never comes into my room at night.
The kitchen is a mess, and there are glass bottles everywhere. My eyes fall on a line of powdered sugar on the counter. My stomach growls, knowing the pastries must be nearby. I consider licking the sugar straight off the counter but think twice when I see the brown paper bag with the Starbucks label. I carefully pick it up just as the door opens and my mommy walks in. Even from across the room, I can tell she is exhausted. Her eyes are watering, and her mascara has started to run. She pulls off her shoes and coat. She looks up at me briefly and smiles before her eyes settle on the counter. Neither of us speaks, as Danny is still sleeping. My mommy looks first at the pastry bag in my hands and then down at the powdered sugar. I gesture that I don’t know where it came from, and her smile fades. She walks towards me, and in one swoop, she has wiped the sugar off the counter and into a plastic baggy. She slips it into her back pocket. She then leans over and kisses my forehead and then Chris’s, combing the hair from my eyes. She whispers in my ear, “I love you, Kit.”
She leaves just as quickly as she came, climbing the steps to her loft.
I creep towards the door and take a seat on the carpeted floor. I open the bag; inside there is a small croissant, a little squished but still whole. I break off a piece and hold it out to Chris, but he doesn’t eat it; he never does. I take a bite myself; it is buttery and sweet, but does little for my grumbling stomach. Just as I’m about to take another bite, I hear rummaging outside the door. I peer out, squinting in the sunlight. A raccoon has tipped over our neighbor’s trash can and is eating a moldy slice of bread. It turns its head to face me and we make eye contact. Its eyes are dark and beady like Chris’s. Its movements are frantic, and I can tell it is scared. I glance over at the kitchen clock. It is past noon. The raccoon steps further into the tipped-over trash bin and pulls out the whole loaf of bread. We make eye contact once more, and the look it gives me is eerily familiar. I have seen it in my mother’s eyes hundreds of times. It is a look of pure desperation and helplessness. The raccoon scurries off, the loaf still in its mouth. I squeeze Chris tighter, hoping the raccoon is bringing the bread back to her children. Chris wraps his paws around me, and I breathe in his familiar scent, finishing my croissant.
