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That was new.
I refused to let myself think about what it could mean. All the same, I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face as I picked up my sketchpad.
I was still smiling as I opened the fridge to grab an apple before leaving for the library.
But when I saw what was inside, my face froze.
My entire body froze.
Time stopped.
After what might have been multiple minutes of my staring numbly at the contents of the refrigerator, I began to shriek.
My sketchpad slipped from my hands and fell to the ground, forgotten. I continued staring into the fridge, my mind reeling as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
There had to be at least thirty bags of blood in there, arranged in orderly rows alongside a bowl of kumquats, my half-finished gallon of orange juice, and a box of Velveeta. Each bag was labeled by blood type and date, and bore the kind of barcode sticker I vaguely remembered being put on blood donation bags when I’d donated in the past.
The sharp, metallic tang of blood was thick, filling the air and nearly making me gag.
Unlike what I’d seen at blood centers, not all these bags were sealed. Some were nearly empty, with a pair of small puncture wounds at the top. Blood dribbled from one of them, leaving a small, sticky, red and drying puddle on the middle shelf.
None of it had been there that morning.
Why was it therenow?
I was still standing in front of the open fridge, gaping at its contents, growing dizzy at the smell of blood and at the shock of what I’d found but too stunned to move away, when the front door to the apartment opened. I distantly heard the heavy tread of Frederick’s footsteps as he stepped inside.
“Frederick,” I called out, my voice thick. “What... whatis all this doing here?”
Something very heavy dropped to the floor. And then came Frederick’s strangled gasp.
“Oh,fuck.”
I looked at him, my hand still tight around the handle of the refrigerator door. Frederick’s eyes were saucer-wide, his hands clutching at his hair in both hands. There was a large package wrapped in bright pink wrapping paper and tied with a pale pink ribbon at his feet. “Please—I can explain. Don’t... don’t get hysterical.”
I gaped at him. “Iwasn’tgetting hysterical before you saidthat.”
He buried his face in his hands. “You... weren’t supposed to see that. You said you’d be gone tonight. I—”
“Frederick?”
“This was not howany of thiswas supposed togo.”
I waited for him to continue, to explain why I’d just found bags of blood in the same place I kept my breakfast. When he just continued standing there, gaping at me open-mouthed like a fish out of water, I closed my eyes and let the fridge door swing closed.
I counted slowly to ten, breathing deeply through my nose to try and calm down. “Frederick—” I began.
“Did you get any O-negative this time, Freddie? I’m famished.” A loud male voice came in from the hallway, his words so hard to process they made the rest of whatever I’d been about tosay die in my throat. A moment later, a vaguely familiar-looking guy with dirty-blond hair strode into the apartment like he owned the place, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans. His black T-shirt saidThis Is What a Clarinet Player Looks Like, and stretched a little too tightly across his chest.
All at once I realized where I’d seen him before.
He was the weird guy in the trench coat and fedora who appraised me at Gossamer’s the other night.
I was stuck on what he’d just said.
Did you get any O-negative this time, Freddie? I’m famished.
I tried to make sense of what I was hearing, but my brain felt sluggish—like it was processing things at half its normal rate of speed.
