Half A Can of Grape Soda

She used to tell him that a racoon is not a typical pet one should keep. It’s a stinky, trash eating thing that belongs outside. But for whatever reason, this particular trash bandit was able to sleep on a small, cat bed below the end corner of Mikko’s bed. The kind of cat bed a cat would refuse to sit in, as it wouldn’t hold up to their standards. Mikko loved the fat, grey and black racoon, and would often sit there and play with it, throwing a little bouncy ball he picked up from one of those vending machines in the mall. Mikko would throw and the racoon would chase after it and return, clutching the thing in its front paws. He never let the racoon out of his room, always refilling a bowl he snuck out of the kitchen one morning with water, and stealing food from dinner. He was happy with it, for a time, as Mikko was not the kind of kid to make friends. He often would have walked home from school alone, even though other kids had lived in his neighborhood. So, when a feeble racoon scratched at his window in need of food, love, and warmth from the rain one night, Mikko was more than happy to have a friend.

They’re wild animals, and will remain wild, his mother used to say. They bite and scratch and will transmit to you a hundred different diseases. She hated all things wild and unruly. Mikko somewhat hated her for it. He though she was boring. The things that excited her, bored him. Her obsession with keeping the baseboards clean and dusted bored him. She loved to keep the table cloth pressed and perfectly centered. She loved fixing things, it cleared her anxiety. But Mikko would ruffle his place at the dinner table just so he wouldn’t have to live in the perfect world, which to him wasn’t so perfect as it didn’t seem to fit him into itself. This action caused her hands to jitter and shake so much she would scream at him to leave the table, so she could fix it before she had any form of a breakdown. That’s the way she was. Everything had its place and had to be there. Mikko would take the food he didn’t eat before leaving to his furry friend. He needed to eat too, so what if mom yells at me a little more? He would say to himself. It didn’t matter. With the racoon Mikko was happy.

But of course, a child’s happiness is never subsided by just one thing, even if it is a living thing. He started to go out on walks more, and school became more difficult, as he had to learn algebra and why some flowers like the sun while others want to live under the canopy of the rainforest. Mikko stopped coming home right after school at 3:30. He would stay for tutoring for an extra hour sometimes all the way up to three. He started to enjoy school more as he was getting better at it. He liked his tutor too. Even though she was roughly 20 years older than him, she was still the most beautiful creature he had seen. And she wasn’t perfect like his mom. She didn’t cake on the same pale powder to her cheeks or gloss the blood-red on her lips. And her not blood-red lips were never opened to reveal perfect pearl teeth in a fake smile.

As Mikko would stay late the racoon would wait. It was used to sitting all day, but it could tell when Mikko was late. That’s an animal thing. They have no concept of time, yet they are aware of its passing, keeping to and expecting the same schedule daily. The racoon started to get antsy in the tight box of a child’s bedroom. The entire world to it had become this one room. The racoon knew that it would be alone for most of the day, so it would find itself something to do, but when the lanky, furless boy who walked on two legs failed to come in, just when the sun hit the bed with a cut of light piercing through the blinds, it became restless. The racoon first began to gnaw on the drywall under the bed. Something Mikko never noticed. But as time went on and Mikko spent more and more time swooning over his tutor with the curly hair, the racoon grew angry and would scratch at the door. Where is he? Why is he not here? What has changed? What will life become? There would be no hope for goodness in the world again, as it was fleeting more and more. And the racoon began to grow impatient.

Mikko’s mom would spend all day cleaning and walking around the house making sure everything was fixed and just so. She would hum her perfect tune to herself and fix her perfect house. The racoon could hear this and knew there was someone outside, beyond the door, the place where Mikko would appear from. He could hear them but they would not come to play, to throw the little rubber ball or to scratch behind his ears. The racoon tore apart Mikko’s bed. He scratched the posts, tore the sheets and thrashed around in them, making confetti. Her eyes widened as she heard the skirt and strike of something in her perfect house. Something totally out of place, totally, unclean, imperfect.

Mikko remembered that day. The day when his tutor with the curly hair and not blood-red lipstick, who wasn’t perfectly so, taught him what a polynomial was. He didn’t know how to use them yet, but he knew what they were. He remembered that day when he stopped at the store on the way home from school and drank a half a can of grape soda with some other boys, and kept the rest to finish later with an old friend. He remembers that day when he came home and found his mom at her not perfectly shined kitchen sink, trembling, shadowy tears mucking her porcelain face, furiously scrubbing at the blood-red gloss that was all over her hands.