Human blood. Not mine, but some other girl's. It wasn't even fresh when Brandon tasted it. A week-old and preserved in a bag with anti-coagulant, he found it at the back of his dad's fridge when he was eleven. But it was enough.
Mine was the first he asked for fresh. It had been over six years, but his taste for it hadn't gone away. At first I said no. Not because it was a strange request. I was his girlfriend after all. Why not? People all over the country, the world even, were getting drunk on blood. Ordering it from online companies where anyone, any age, could sell pints of their own for a few bucks. Going to shady clubs where girls draped themselves on sofas like a banquet and let men taste what was inside them.
Doctors and scientists and feel-good-self-help authors were raving about the effects of human blood in our diet. It was boosting overall health. Giving extra strength. Creating more stable life-styles. Whatever that meant.
Brandon had never tried it fresh. But bagged blood could only satisfy someone so long. The more he drank, the more he wanted. I should have been flattered he was asking me and not some random girl at a bar. But still, I said no, and I wasn't even sure why. It bothered me, him asking, him even drinking it in the first place, but I knew it shouldn't have.
Deaths started occurring, but they were small, and not given much credit.
A notification on my phone from a news app: Man in hospital predicts own death if not given blood to drink. Request denied. Man dead within twelve hours from unknown causes.
A reporter on the late-night news: A man was found dead at the scene of a murder. The victim was drained of blood. Story to follow.
An expert on a talk show: We have no conclusive evidence to suggest that the new blood-diet is leading to either murder or death. There are very few substances that can kill a person merely from withdrawal, and human blood is not one of them.
The price of blood went up anyway, from ten dollars a bag to twenty, then forty, as demand spiked. Bars offered blood cocktails and vodka spiked with blood, which was cheaper, event though most people preferred straight shots. Grocery stores even stared carrying it in the refrigerator section, bottled and labeled with the type. Apparently B+ tasted different from O-. Pushing my cart through the store, I tried not to vomit at the thick dark liquid. And still the prices went up.
"Please?" Brandon said. "It won't hurt. I have the analgesic wipes to numb your skin. You don't even have to do anything. Just sit there. I won't take much."
I could always tell when he'd been drinking it. His eyes would get a little bloodshot, like he'd lost sleep over the drink, and his pupils would dilate, predatory. He would look at me the way guys sometimes did, all up and down, taking in the blue of my veins against my wrists, the jugular at my throat. Sometimes he would touch his fingers to my pulse, and I could feel the ache in that touch, the desire for more. When he kissed my neck, my wrists, even the backs of my hands, I could tell he was holding himself back. He said he could smell it, and I believed him.
But he hadn't had any in a while. It cost too much. He'd already borrowed a couple hundred from me, and I knew I was never getting it back.
Sitting on the couch, in the dark, my head on his lap, he traced the vein down the side of my neck, chin to collarbone. His hands were shaking.
"Please?" he whispered. "I promise not to hurt you." He rubbed my collarbone with his thumb. The pressure was faint, he was so weak, but still his touch made me shiver.
When I shifted to look up at him, the angle accentuated the hollows of his eyes, the sharp lines of his cheekbones. He wasn't eating. Couldn't sleep.
He looked so tired and broken, that I knew. The news reporters were wrong. The lack of blood was killing him. If he didn't get more blood, and soon, he could be dead in a few days.
His voice got low, like he was about to cry. "Please?"
I was done being selfish. He needed me. Needed my blood. I didn't need it. Not all of it. Why had I kept it back so long. Maybe there was a way to fix him. Make him whole again, without blood. Ease him off it. But right then, he needed me, and I couldn't say no. I wouldn't. And, I realized, opening my mouth, I wanted him to drink my blood. I wanted it the way I wanted him to kiss me when he would stand two inches away. So I smiled with that same kiss-me look as I said, "Okay."
That wasn't my first mistake. But it was almost my last.
Three months later, I was still anemic, still fingering the scar ripped down my wrist.
"Please," I begged, as my mom pulled up in front of the school. "Please, don't make me go back. I'll finish out the school year at home. He'll be there. He'll be waiting for me."
But he wasn't.
I locked myself in a bathroom stall and cried all through first period with too much of every emotion.
At lunch, I stood with my brown paper bag at the cafeteria doorway and watched people whisper.
Three months, I imagined them saying.
I heard she did time.
I heard she was working at a blood-bar.
You think she's got any scars?
"Hey."
I jumped.
A guy stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes at me.
"That was hello," he said. "I'm Stefan. Wanna sit at my table?" He was my height and almost as skinny as I was with dark hair and dark eyes. He wore his clothes loose and comfortable. He pointed across the cafeteria and a couple girls waved from a wall table.
I nodded.
They were too close to one of the cafeteria TVs, turned to the news station.
"In your opinion, doctor, should this be classified as an epidemic?"
My seat was facing the TV, so I stared at each item as I revealed it from the paper bag. Plastic-wrapped tuna sandwich. Applesauce. Candy bar.
"While the link between blood withdrawal and certain symptoms cannot be ignored, I believe this is something that can be managed is the public chooses to stay educated."
"You always pack dessert?" Stefan asked.
I nodded.
"Dessert is the best part!" he said.
"I think some people want to believe in something terrifying every chance they get."
"Ugh. There talking about the whole blood-diet debate again," one of the girls complained. "I don't see what the big deal is. I've tried it, and yeah it was really great, but it didn't do anything weird to me."
I peeled the top off my applesauce. I'd forgotten a spoon.
"Is it true that some of the symptoms of blood withdrawal, if left untreated, can lead to serious illness or even death?"
"Here," Stefan slid his hot-lunch spoon over to me. When I looked at him, he crossed his eyes at me, then grinned. I took the spoon.
"If you are experiencing unmanageable fatigue, and intense cravings for human blood, coupled with insomnia, please seek immediate medical attention."
"The scary thing is," the other girl at the table said, her eyes on the television, "that you can't tell just by looking at someone if they're craving your blood. It shouldn't creep me out, but it kind of does, you know? I mean, no one's going to kill anyone for their blood or anything, but it's still kind of weird to me. I guess I haven't tried it, so I don't know what the hype is all about."
"Oh, it's worth trying," the first girl said.
"So, how's day going so far?" Stefan asked me.
I shrugged, and put my sandwich back in the bag. I didn't even eat the candy bar.
It had still been three months by the end of the day. I'd counted because it felt like three years or three weeks, and I thought I'd go insane if I didn't keep track of how long I'd been alive. How long I'd been surviving.
"Why don't you ever talk?" Stefan asked me after school, standing in the parking lot with the group that let me sit by them at lunch.
"I talk," I said.
He smiled and flipped messy hair out of his eyes. "Now I believe you. I thought for a while you might be mute."
I shrugged. "I don't have much to say."
"Everyone has something to say," he said.
When one of the girls suggested we all go swimming in the school pool since it was starting to warm up, I wrapped my summer sweater more securely and crossed my arms.
"Are you coming?" Stefan asked. He looked me right in the eye, not up and down like most guys did, like they were imagining the look of my veins under my skin in a swimsuit.
I shrugged. "I might come for a bit," I said. "But I have to run home first. Text me if you guys are still there in a couple hours or so."
He tipped his head. "We're not going to still be there, " he said. "You know that."
I blinked.
"You should come and stop acting like you can't have fun with us."
"I'm not," I said. "I've just got some stuff to do at home."
He considered this.
"Come on, Stefan!" one of the girls said.
"I'll catch you guys up," he said.
"'Kay," and they was gone.
"What's bothering you?" Stefan asked.
"Nothing," I said.
He nodded, like he understood what I meant, not what I said. "You know you don't have to lie to me, right?" he said. "You don't have to tell me. But if you need to tell someone, let me know."
I didn't have anything coherent to say to that, so I nodded and pressed my thumb into the scar on my left wrist. In three months, no one had ever asked. They'd assumed they already knew.
He kept looking at me, so I looked at the ground.
Then I held out my wrist into the space he'd opened up between us. And I pulled up my sleeve to show the scar. It ran ragged from the center of my wrist off to the side, where the skin had torn.
"I tried to get away," I said.
He didn't touch it. He took in the sight in less than a second and then his gaze was back on mine. "A boy," he said.
I didn't nod. I didn't have to. "I tried to call 911." I realized I'd been waiting, needing to tell someone. Anyone. "I was so gone by then, I could barely remember how to push the numbers," I said. "He kicked my phone across the room. But I guess the call went through anyway. I didn't wake up for a while, but they said they found me on the floor of his front room in a puddle of blood. He'd run, I guess. He said it was an accident, and he didn't realize. But I saw his eyes. I asked him to stop, after a minute, you know, but he didn't. He put his hand over my mouth and nose so I couldn't scream and kept drinking my blood. So I tried to get away, and this happened. But he still didn't stop."
His mouth to my skin, the needle and IV tubing ripped out of my vein, his teeth red.
I looked at the pavement again, focusing on the yellow spray-painted line. I pulled down my sleeve and breathed.
"My therapist said I was making it up," I said. "But I wasn't."
We both listened to me breathe too loudly.
"I have a question," he said. "Could I give you a hug? Also, do you want to go dancing with me this weekend?"
When I looked up, his eyes were clear. Sincere.
"Yes," I said. "I'd like that."
He took first place for best hug.
He picked me up that Friday. His car was silver, and smelled like french fries and chocolate. We went swing dancing, and he was good.
When he spun me, his eyes were full of the music. He didn't glance at my throat. Not even when I tipped my head back and laughed. Not once. It made me want to laugh more, free and giddy.
When I came up too fast from a dip, and almost blacked out from not eating and not sleeping for three months, he bought me a plastic bottle of water and let us outside to sit down and breathe.
"I'm sorry," I gasped, still out of breath from twirling and sliding.
"For what?" he asked.
I gulped at the water, waiting for my head to right itself. "We should be dancing."
He smiled. "I asked you on a date because I wanted to get to know you. Sitting is as good as dancing as far as I'm concerned."
"So what do you want to know?" I asked.
"Do you like slides?"
"What?" I laughed. "You asked me on a date to find out if I liked slides?"
He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. "There's a park close by. You want to go?"
"Sure!" I capped my water and followed him. Walking the three blocks, I let my hands hang at my sides, the one closest to him empty and wishing it wasn't.
The gate was open, but all the lights in the park were off.
"This is creepy," I said, and crossed my eyes at him.
He laughed.
Still holding the plastic water bottle, I climbed a slide and swung myself on top of the monkey bars, hooking my knees and dangling upside down.
"What makes you the happiest?" he asked.
"I'm happy right now," I said.
"Every day. What makes you happy every day?"
"People," I said. "Good people. And ice cream." I pulled myself back upright and swung my legs. He climbed up beside me.
He was so close, our shoulders were touching.
"You smell good," he said.
"Really?" I sniffed my hair. I'd washed it with baking soda and vinegar, so I doubted that was it. "I'm not wearing any perfume."
He shook his head. "Not perfume. You smell good. Just you."
"You want some water?" I asked, holding out the bottle. "It'll make you smell good."
He didn't laugh, but after a second he took the bottle and gulped some.
"What about you?" I asked as he handed the water back. "What makes you so happy every time I see you?"
He looked back at the gate we'd come through, and then all around the park, like he was about to tell me a secret. "Finding good people," he said. He looked right at me. "Like you."
"I'm not such a great person," I said.
"You're better than me."
I laughed. "Uh-huh, because you're so evil, taking me dancing and buying me water." I held up my bottle.
"I'm dangerous," he said.
I chuckled. "Define dangerous for me, please." I took a swig of water. And then I saw his face, and I felt like the rest of the water bottle had dumped, cold, into my stomach. I shouldn't have laughed.
"As soon as I get close to someone," he said, "they get hurt."
"You're cursed?" I asked, making a last attempt to keep it light. Wishing I was wrong. But I wasn't.
"No." He had his hands together, elbows on knees, one fist inside the other. "No, if anything I curse other people. When they get too close."
I swallowed. "So, you're telling me not to get too close?" My voice was getting quieter.
"I'm telling you that if you do, you'll end up hurt. Promise me something?"
I looked down at the water bottle in my hands.
"Don't get attached to me, okay?"
Too late, I thought. I could hear my blood in my ears.
"You scare me," he said. It was so quiet I could barely hear it over the rushing in my head.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I care about you."
And I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew, and I wanted to scream. Not in terror. But in agony.
I realized I was crushing the water bottle in my hands.
"This is about blood," I said.
He didn't nod. He didn't need to. He closed his eyes, and I felt the last bit of togetherness inside me crumble.
"I've been fighting it," he said. "The craving. But I'm not safe. I can't fight it forever."
And I saw how he hadn't always been so thin, so ragged. He played it off well, leaving his dark hair just a little too long, wearing his clothes a little too loose, like the look was natural. When he wasn't smiling, he looked so exhausted he could hardly hold himself up.
"Run," he said. "Just run. Run as far and as fast as you can. Take my car if you need to." He held out the keys.
"You'll die," I said. "You'll be dead by morning."
"Get away from me! Please." The keys dangled from hand, his eyes still closed. "Please, run. Now. I don't want to hurt you too."
The playground was so dark, I thought the ground was farther than it was when I jumped, and hit it hard.
But I didn't scream even then. I didn't cry. I didn't beg to stay. I didn't tell him it was okay or I understood. I didn't even get mad. I picked the keys back up from where I'd dropped them in the fall, and then I ran.
I ran all the way to his car, locked myself inside, and called 911.
When they found him, he was already dead.
And I was alive. I was alive.
He had kept me alive.
That was when I screamed.
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