Best New Fiction: Orange Lady by Allison Field Bell

Orange Lady

by Allison Field Bell

I’m walking home from school—high school, sigh, what a waste—and there she is on a corner in town slinging oranges. For free. Nothing is free in 2026. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out a way to charge us for air. Correction: before they charge some people for air. Billionaires, apparently, will be the ones charging us. This is what my mother says. She says the more money you have, the more money you make. To which I say, That’s fucked. And she says, Don’t use bad words. And then we watch old episodes of the X-Files and try not to talk to each other.

Back to Orange Lady. She looks like you might imagine a woman giving out oranges to look. Witchy. Like she dropped into our world from a netherworld where people don’t care about what kind of jean is currently acceptable. I’m still wearing baggy, wide-leg because my mother says, what do I expect? A new pair of jeans every month. She’s got bills to pay.

Orange Lady is young. She’s not young young, but she’s for sure not old. When I pass her, she speaks to me. She says the word Orange. With a question mark. I say, What? And she says, Orange? She’s wearing all black. Like layers of black. Velvet and lace and black boots. I told you: witchy.

Now I know I’m not supposed to take food from strangers, I’m seventeen after all. Still, she’s got a basket of oranges and the witchyness about her and I just flat out trust her right away. The way she says orange. I can tell she’s not from California. Maybe from somewhere out east. New England or Kentucky.

I take the orange. I say thank you. She nods and offers an orange to the football player and his girlfriend who are trailing behind me, avoiding walking in-step with me because we don’t have shit to say to each other. I watch as the two of them laugh at Orange Lady. She shrugs and offers an orange to the next person: skater, Bobby, who lives off of red bull and weed. He sing-songs thanks and scoops an orange into his pocket before racing off on his skateboard.

Meanwhile, I stand there watching. Peeling my orange. Orange Lady doesn’t ignore me exactly. She’s giving me space, but I can tell she’s interested in talking if I want to. She’s got that openness my mother has never ever had. Not pushing me into conversation but not pushing me away either.

What’s with the oranges? I ask.

She shrugs.

Right, I say.

She says, I have an orchard. It’s a lot of oranges. More than I can eat.

Why don’t you sell them? I ask

She shrugs again. Don’t need the money.

I look at her. It’s unfathomable. Not needing the money. Maybe she’s a billionaire. I peel off a section of orange, pop it into my mouth. Sweet but with that bite that makes an orange an orange.

I say, Thanks, and I walk away.

I see her every day for the next month. Then she disappears.

Everything spins and tilts and time takes on weird shapes in my memory. My eighteenth birthday. A bouquet of red balloons and a sheet cake from Safeway. My first attempt at sex. A friend, Paul, unremarkable. My mother losing her job. The night of: picking her up in the square, her swaying body. Now she bartends at Old Main. It’s fine, she says, but the hours suck. Plus, there’s the health insurance factor. I don’t know about health insurance as a factor, but my mother says I ought to know now. I’m eighteen. An adult. I can vote. I should know.

And then one day, back again with her oranges: Orange Lady. This time I’m determined to talk to her more. The thing is: we do talk and she invites me to her house. Well, to her orchard.

I say, How old are you?

She says, Old enough.

I say, How old?

She says, Twenty.

I say, So your parents’ orchard.

She shakes her head no. No parents, she says.

I laugh, but she’s serious.

Where are your parents? I ask.

The dynamic has shifted, like I’m the grownup and she’s the kid.

Dead, she says.

Oh, I say. Sorry.

At her house are orange trees. Sebastopol can grow apples and grapes, but citrus? No. I don’t know much, but I know that.

Beautiful, I say.

And it is. The dark green cut by spots of electric orange. The sun sinking behind them.

I’m very aware of her beside me. And I think it’s the moment we ought to kiss or fight or something. But there’s just her quietly moving through the orchard, black skirt catching dirt. And then she says, Take as many as you can carry.

I start picking. Shoving oranges in the pockets of my too-big jeans. And when my pockets are full, I use my shirt as a basket and pile them there, growing a belly of oranges. The smell is astringent and sweet. I want to rub my whole body in it. The smell is orange.

When I finish collecting all I can carry and dump them into the passenger seat of my car, Orange Lady has vanished. I shout, Hey. And: Where are you?

There is no answer.

I sit for a minute in the car, stare at the pile of oranges beside me. My mother will be pleased. She says the price of fruit has gone way up. And can I just be okay be peanut butter and jelly for a few days? I tell her I’ll get a job, but she insists I focus on school and friends. High school is all I can give you, she says. She says, Make the most of it.

The oranges: like gemstones, catching the last light of the day. A block of color. A kind of glowing. A kind of hope.

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Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer and teacher from California. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Utah and an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Allison is the author of two collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, forthcoming from Red Hen Press) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, forthcoming from Chestnut Review Books), Without Woman or Body (Poetry, Finishing Line Press), and Edge of the Sea (Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Find a new story by Allison in Issue 23 of Stanchion Magazine (June 2026) and more of her work at allisonfieldbell.com.