ORANGE CREAMSICLES

The lights were out all through the house. Nothing but the air conditioning made a sound, droning on and routinely switching its cycle every fistful of minutes. Ethan had only met this time of day a few times in passing; it still felt like he was in uncharted territory every time he was up this late. But it was going to be a long night, it seemed; a long night of lying on that couch and looking at his leg bound in a cast, wondering when the thing was going to start doing the one thing he kept it around for again - or at the very least stop keeping him up with the constant, nagging pain with every inch he moved it.

Suddenly, he heard the lock on the front door jiggling. Any sound coming from that door was always the most noticable thing in the house, somehow. The door opened up, and his older sister came in. "Think fast," Lynn said, while already beginning to throw something straight at him. Ethan didn't exactly catch it, but he swung his arms in a way that would have caught it if he had another moment's notice. She shut the door behind her, carrying some grocery bags on her other arm. There was one of those orange push-popsicle treats in his lap now, just as he had asked for earlier. Lynn set the bags down on the coffee table and sat on the couch beside him. "I got you your orange things, which are not, and never have been creamsicles, by the way." She had said this exact sentence many times before.

"Thanks," said Ethan, in a voice that had clearly hardly been used in the last few hours, as he pushed the cap off the orange thing and stuck it in his mouth, being careful not to let the cold treat touch his fangs.

Lynn, not satisfied with the state of the conversation, started talking again. "Tomorrow's gonna be real busy now that we're the ones hosting Christmas dinner," she lamented. It's why she went out for groceries in the first place; they suddenly needed to cook a lot of dishes on short notice. Ethan didn't have any comment. Hejust looked silently at nowhere in particular, letting the push pop melt in his mouth. Lynn wasn't going to leave him alone in this state all night. She had to do something to get him to talk.

She reached into the bags and plucked another frozen orange treat thing from it. This alone didn't faze him. "For the gas money," Lynn noted, as if she was expecting an "oh, obviously" in response. Then, Ethan finally seemed to start paying attention

"You were already driving there," he said, finally with a hint of effort, having sat up and turned towards Lynn.

"Well," she said, twirling the orange freezysicle with the movements of her paws, "older sibling tax, then."

"I could pay the older sibling tax in actual money! Or just pay you back for the whole box!" He was starting to get his arms involved in his emoting, too, talking in a raised voice which would only be considered raised relative to the two-in-the-morning whisper they were speaking in before.

"Do you want to? The box was like two dollars." She was staring right at him like this had been a genuine offer she didn't have an opinion about, as opposed to a complete fabrication. Ethan blinked slowly, not in the way that cats are known to when calm and happy, but in the way that all people do, when they haven't slept in too long and they're eyes have to work up the strength to open again. Suddenly, his eyes opened up a bit more, like he just got an idea.

"...I thought you hated those," he said in a quieter "gotcha" sort of tone. He felt he fatally wounded Lynn's argument for eating the pop-up orangesicle.

"Eh, it's sugar." Lynn couldn't bring herself to deny her feelings on the topic, but admitting it wouldn't have been productive here.

"And why would you want that this late?" Ethan was having a field day with all these fallacies, but Lynn knew what she was doing. If he was having a field day, she was driving the bus.

"Why would you?" The problem Ethan had with this answer is that it was completely right. To affirm this point would be to put down the sorbelicious citrus-pop, which was not an option, but to refute it would be to claim some kind of exception exclusive to him, and exalting one's self above the oldest sister opens up a whole new can of worms. He took a bite of the poppy freezy tangeriney, deep in thought.

"Good point," he said, in the exact same tone one would have said "touché," before raising the rod of frozen orange towards Lynn. "Cheers." Lynn tapped her still unopened popscicle against Ethan's, and you could practically hear the *clink* sound of two old Kentucky bourbon glasses raised together in celebration, though perhaps, given the degree of dignity in this situation, the *clack* of two big, wooden tankards of ale would've fit better.

Ethan was in much better spirits now, but Lynn was now faced with the grim reality that everyone in the room - that is, Ethan and herself - expected her to *eat* the no-cream-yes-orange freezie she was holding. She popped the cap off, pushed the treat up a few inches, and raised it to her open mouth. She could feel the cold air emanating from it like a chilled wine, laced with the foulest of poisons. As she sunk her teeth in, she imagined the crude oil which was undoubtably refined into whatever unholy "natural and artificial flavors" were poured into this cardboard vial, and she felt the citric acid singe her tongue, hiding behind the siren song of thirteen grams of added sugars.

"Do you think you're like, alergic?" Ethan said, noticing that Lynn realized had been dramatically wincing the past five seconds. Lynn looked over to him without taking her mouth off of the poison. She finished her bite, thinking deeply. She couldn't really remember the last time she had an actual orange. She could remember the last time Ethan had an orange, soaked in juice and holding his paws like they were drenched in innocent blood on his way to wash it off, but the boys were always too quick to eat any oranges that entered the house.

"I don't know," she mumbled with her mouth full.

"That'd be the funniest possible conclusion to this, you know."

Over the next few minutes Lynn ate the rest of her peach-colored, non-peach-flavored treat like a child sipping the few milliliters of champagne he gets at the first midnight of the year; the song of the sugar didn't diminish any of the other problems she had with it, but she kept eating it anyway. Soon it was just the two of them, sitting in a dark living room with empty popsicle tubes in their paws. Without a word, Lynn got up from the couch and loaded the grocery bags onto her arm. Then looked back to Ethan, holding the box of the orangesque ice cylinders.

"I'll hide these in the back of the freezer for you," she smiled.

After that, Ethan's leg stopped seeming to be such a problem, and he started to feel like he might finally get some sleep.