Fallow

Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world's first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind. Natalie knows one truth: there is no such thing as a good job. As the clock ticks away at the call center where she logs complaints of workplace harassment, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled. Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot program, pitched as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity. She will be their in-house surrogate, delivering seven babies in ten years and enabling their executives to have motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately-generously-compensated. For years, her every need is met: stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock health care. Between deliveries, she takes time off- a fallow period, with no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free. But just as she's about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything. Natalie is pulled into an entirely different kind of social experiment, one that raises new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, what she can expect from the world, and what she can offer to it. Woundingly funny and genuinely moving, Sarah Anderson's Fallow is a tender, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.

Sarah Anderson is a writer from Eagleville, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. Her story "Take Me to Kirkland," originally published in Joyland, was featured in The Best American Short Stories 2025. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.