| Aashika Suresh | January 2026 | Short Story |
Strange things do not happen to me. Ordinary? Plenty. Slightly out of the ordinary? Sometimes. Like finding a coin on the side of the road when I want to make a phone call and have no change. Or getting a text from a relative I dreamt about the previous night.
Once, a strange thing did happen to me. In high school, I went to a friend’s house to study. We were in her room, sprawled belly down on a larger-than-queen-sized bed, but not quite kingsized, solving math equations. I had my feet up in the air like I usually do, my chin in my left palm, and a pencil in the other, one I hadn’t put to paper in over forty five minutes.
Just when I thought I had made a breakthrough on how to solve the first equation, my friend’s mother walked in with two oranges. “You girls need some Vitamin C,” she quipped, placing them on the study desk that neither of us was using. My friend mumbled something inaudible, and her mother walked out just as the breakthrough left me.
Might as well have an orange, I thought to myself. Usually, choosing an orange isn’t something I would care about, but on this particular day, one orange looked oranger than the other. I’m quite wary about objects or even people, for that matter, who seem… too them. You know what I mean? So, I ended up picking the duller orange.
Peeling it back, I found it whole. No segments. Or supremes. Or whatever it is you call the usual slices that oranges are supposed to have.
I called out to my friend to show her this strange thing. She gave me a puzzled look. “This is how they’re supposed to be!” she said. I furrowed my eyebrows at her. “What are you saying? Oranges are supposed to have slices. You peel the rind, remove the pith, and eat individual slices,” I explained it to her, but also rationalized to myself.
She shook her head. “Nope. They’re like mangoes, whole. You’re supposed to remove a small portion on the top and suck the flesh out.”
Huh.
Suffice to say, I did not eat that orange.
That night, I Googled if this was possible. As a matter of fact, it could happen, Google told me, but it was very rare. That made sense. I dismissed it and never thought about it again. I ate many oranges after that, and never did I come across one that didn’t have segments.
My friend and I graduated from high school and moved to different countries. Although we both applied to the same university, she got in, and I didn’t. I pursued accounting at a city college three hours from home. She moved to Europe to study palaeontology. We kept in touch for a few years over texts and Facebook until life got in the way. We still wished each other on birthdays, and she sent me a condolence message when my first pet rabbit died.
After that, I learnt about what she was up to from her Facebook posts: Traveling to Italy and learning to make pasta from an Italian grandmother. Going skinny dipping in Lake Bled. Getting pregnant with her French boyfriend’s baby and subsequently marrying his older brother.
I was an ordinary girl, and in comparison, I led an ordinary life. I got a job as an accountant in my home city, rented an apartment a couple of blocks away from my parents, and visited them every weekend. I adopted a pig. On warm, summer days, Chucky and I sat on the small balcony sipping chai as we stared at the new buildings cropping up on the other side.
***
On a regular Wednesday, as I was checking up on my bougainvillea to ensure it was getting enough nutrients, a loud ping on my phone distracted me.
‘Hey! How are you? It’s been so long! I’m in town for a couple of days. Want to hang out?’
Huh.
A whole decade after my friend had moved to Europe, she visited our little city for the first time since she left. I found out about it on Facebook, of course. I wondered if I should reach out to her and ask to meet. I hadn’t made friends after high school.
It was strange that the message should come. I debated about whether or not to go.
That weekend, I put on an oversized sweater and black pants to meet my European-returned friend. She was staying at an uptown hotel in the prime of the city. I kissed Chucky on his snout and promised to return before nightfall.
When I arrived at the hotel and asked for her room, they guided me up to the very top floor. Pent suite. Boy, was she living a lavish life for a palaeontologist! She greeted me at the door with a charming smile and pulled me into a hug. She was just as warm as I remembered from high school.
We sat on the couch and spoke for hours. She did most of the talking, of course. I listened and quipped in with validation wherever relevant. She showed me pictures of her wedding and her baby boy, of almost five. He had glossy, curly hair and a smile that mirrored hers. “He lies in bed with his feet up just like you!” she said to me, laughing. She enquired after my parents and Chucky, showing just as much interest in my little piglet as I did in her son.
Just then, the bell rang, and a butler walked in with a tray of fruit. He placed it before us and rushed out quickly. I spotted two oranges in the pile. Memories of that evening from high school came flooding back.
I picked up an orange. “You remember that day in high school when your mom served us oranges? That strange orange that had no sections?” She gave me the same puzzled look. “What sections?” I laughed as I peeled the orange.
No sections.
“You’re doing it wrong!” she squealed, but I had already peeled the whole thing.
She picked up the other orange to demonstrate how it must be done. This time, she was the one surprised. “This orange is weird,” she said. I peered over to inspect. It had sections and pith.
“That’s what an orange is supposed to look like,” I told her, with some relief.
She shook her head. “Nope.” She tossed the orange to me. I handed her mine, but she placed it back on the tray. “I can’t have this now. You’ve peeled it!”
I eyed the strange orange—so round and whole. It absorbed the white light from the chandelier and glowed ethereal. My friend seemed unbothered. I must admit, I was curious to find out what it would taste like.
As she spoke on the phone with her husband, I gingerly picked up the strange orange. I sniffed it. Pretty normal and citrusy. I took a bite. It was juicy with a bit of a tang, just the way I liked my oranges. It didn’t taste strange at all. I devoured it in a couple of bites.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke up in my friend’s bed.
From high school.
On the day of the strange orange incident.
My friend was on the bed, pouring over the math equation. “What’s happening?” I asked her, panicked. “Um, I’m stuck on the last equation. I can’t seem to figure out what to do with this X.”
Before I could say something, her mother walked in. “You girls need some Vitamin C,” she said, placing two oranges on the desk, and walked out.
“What’s happening?” I asked again. “Am I dreaming?”
“You fell asleep on your homework, that’s what’s happening,” she replied. “Go have an orange and help me figure this out, please, genius!”
Orange. It had to be something to do with the orange. Strange things don’t happen to me. It was the strange orange.
I hurried over to the desk and picked up the oranger-looking orange. I peeled it. Normal. With sections. I set it back on the table and peeled the other orange.
Sections.
“Aaaah!”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It has sections!” She looked at me like she was going to kill me for interrupting her thoughts. “No, there’s only one section in the assignment.”
“No, the orange. It has sections! Supremes. Whatever it is you call it. I need a whole orange.”
“What is wrong with you? All oranges have sections! That’s how they are,” she said. “Wow, must’ve been a weird dream. Wake up,” she said, shaking me by my shoulders. I was starting to really panic now.
I raced downstairs. “Auntie, do you have any more oranges?” I asked her mother. She smiled at me and handed me another orange from the fridge. I hastily peeled it. Sections. I threw it on the table.
“Do you have more?” I asked her. She was a kind woman, but imagine a 17-year-old throwing a fit in your dining room over oranges. “Why? Isn’t that good enough?”
“You don’t understand. I need an orange without sections!” I told her. My friend was standing in the doorway. “I don’t know what happened. She woke up like this,” she shrugged at her mother.
I walked to the fridge and opened the fruit drawer. There were three more oranges. I pulled them all out and peeled them. Sections. “I have to go! Sorry auntie, thank you!” I yelled as I rushed out of the house.
I raced to the nearest supermarket and bought all the oranges in stock. I bought the sweet limes too, just in case. There were four cartons in all. I loaded them up in my Uber, and despite the driver’s protests, I urged him to race home.
In the kitchen, I began peeling them. One by one. By the time I was done, there was a mound of orange and sweet lime rinds on the kitchen floor and about a hundred fruits all over the three kitchen counters.
All of them had sections.
I was confused and exhausted.
I locked my room and cried myself to sleep that night, hoping and praying it was all a dream.
I woke up the next morning. In my bed. Still seventeen.
Over the next week, I went to every supermarket in the city that sold oranges and bought them all. None of them was the strange kind I was looking for.
After about a month of trying, explaining to my parents, my new therapist, and even a cosmic healer, I decided to give up. Maybe it was all some dream or hallucination, as the therapist had suggested. I got on some pills (that were orange-coloured, to my horror) and got on with life.
I got into the European university I had applied to. My friend didn’t. I lived in a small studio in the town and studied accounting. I met Hugo in my second year of Uni and we dated until the end of the undergraduate course. We travelled to Spain to celebrate our graduation and mark the end of our relationship. He had found a job in London, and I was staying back to work for a hedge fund. We made love on a starry night on a beach in Ibiza, and I watched him swim in the shallow water, the moon glistening on his perfect back.
A few weeks after we returned from Ibiza and Hugo had moved to London, I found out that I was pregnant. I had a lump in my throat. I thought of the strange orange incident. Was it a dream? Was it some weird universe switch? Because it felt like I was living my friend’s life. I journaled about it but never recounted the memories with anyone else in my new life. I never kept in touch with my friend, who stayed back in our childhood city to study literature. The day I found out about the pregnancy, I messaged her on Facebook.
We chatted for a while, and I learnt that she never moved out of her parents’ home. I wondered if I should bring up the orange. I didn’t. I considered getting an abortion, but I had always dreamed of being a mother.
I made a life I was proud of. Chandrakant, aka Chucky, and I. My job allowed me to travel the world over and have exciting and strange experiences I never thought I would. Chucky went with me until he was old enough for school.
When Chucky was almost five, my mother fell violently ill. She wanted to see me. I hadn’t visited home in a while because of my love child. I was nervous, but I got us both tickets home. We flew business class, me drinking a ton of wine and Chucky watching cartoons all the way there.
Since my house was under renovation, I booked a room in the city. They only had a suite available. Just as I had finished checking in and was getting ready to go visit my mother, my phone pinged.
It was her. She wanted to catch up.
I should have said no, I really didn’t want to meet her, given what I knew (and she didn’t), but I said yes out of guilt. She dropped by the suite later that night. Chucky took to her instantly. He snuggled on her lap and played with her long, curly hair. I noticed how their mannerisms were similar. It made me sick.
When the bell boy brought in the tray of fruit, my stomach dropped. Two oranges. Perfectly orange oranges.
As Chucky asked her questions about her life and her pet toad, I sat fiddling with the chain around my neck. We were down three glasses of wine each. I kept watching her to see if she would reach for the oranges. I didn’t want to seem strange, but my head was reeling.
Eventually, Chucky reached for an orange. “Do you want, Mammy?” he asked me, holding out his hand. I hadn’t eaten an orange in ten years. I grabbed it from his tiny palms and peeled it open. Sections.
Then, to my horror, he handed her the other one.
“Do you want me to peel that for you?” I asked her politely. She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t like oranges.” I tried to hide my relief the best I could as she placed it back on the tray. I eased up after that.
We chatted for a while longer, and as I tucked Chucky into bed, I asked her to stay the night. She refused. She had to go back home. Her parents didn’t like her staying away at night. I nodded in understanding.
She picked up her purse from the couch and promised to stay in touch. I shut the door behind her and sat back for one last glass of wine. The moonlight shimmered through the glass window and bounced off my wine glass.
I glanced down at the table. Both oranges were gone.
Everything fell silent.
In the bedroom, Chucky was nowhere to be found.
_________________________
Aashika Suresh is a journalist and writer. Her poems and fiction have appeared in Out of Print, Chestnut Review, Madras Courier, nether Quarterly, Tiffinbox Review, InFrame, among others. She is the co-founder of Pena, a literary magazine, and the author of Notes on Black Things, a novella that is available on Amazon Kindle.
_________________________
Artwork by National Gallery of Art on Unsplash (Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves 1889 Vincent van Gogh)
Find MeanPepperVine on Instagram @MeanPepperVine
