The Middle Child

Chapter 1

Alyson sat straight up in bed her stomach tightened with unease. She'd just woken up from yet another night terror. Though oddly enough she couldn't remember exactly what about. This happened fairly often.

Sighing loudly, she slipped her legs out from underneath the blankets and stood up. Her eyes still droopy and tired as she went to shower. It was already late in the morning her siblings were already awake, most likely eating lunch in the kitchen. She grabbed some clothes that didn't fit properly. They were all hand-me-downs from her two older sisters. They were more blessed in the chest region than herself which made all the clothes much too big for her petite body. She ignored it as she pulled on a zip-up hoodie to hide the much too baggy clothes and started with her day.

Alyson slipped into the kitchen unnoticed as the large group of 10 at the table talking amongst themselves. Her four older siblings Andrew, Nick, Ella, and Emma. Her four younger sibling Samson, Simon, Oliva, Lillian, and lastly her parents.

Andrew was the oldest and in his jr year of college. He was loud and liked to party. Nick is also a jr in collage-despite being nine months younger than Andrew- and only cares for his grades and reading. Ella and Emma are twins and are in their sophomore year of college. Both are studying fashion and design.

Samson and Simon are also twins, but they're sophomores in high school. Both are extremely immature. Oliva is a freshman and loves to tell Lillian what to do-both are in the same class.

The ages from oldest to youngest go Andrew at 23, Nick at 22, Ella and Emma at 21, Alyson at 18, Samson and Simon at 15, Oliva is 14, and Lillian is 13.

There are nine children total in the family. Every child had a person to play with them. Alyson, however, did not since she was born too late to play with her older sisters and born too early to play with her younger brothers. She was the black sheep of the family.

Her blue eyes shared the same colour as the rest but lacked the bright shimmer all her family seemed to share and replaced with a hollow reflection. Her blonde hair darker than her siblings platinum blonde, closer to golden than platinum. She was just slightly off compared to her siblings.

After grabbing some food, she sat down at the very end of the table-like always- and ate her food quietly as she listened to the stir of conversation at the table.

"A new family is moving in next door. I'd like all of you to make sure to be there. Since it's Saturday and school is out next week I know you don't have many plans," Claire, their mother, ordered, earning a crowd of groans and complains.

Alyson, on the other hand, was extremely excited to meet the new neighbours. To call them neighbour was a bit of an exaggeration live on a 170-acre plot. That's a lot of land between two houses. Alyson and her family lived in a small part of Maine where they grew blueberries.

"I want you guys to be nice to them and treat them like our own, Got it?" Though they lived in Maine, Miss Archerson was from the deep south and sounded like it too.

"Yes ma'am," all nine children responded softly. They soon finished their meal and went on with their chores. Today Alyson had to make sure the berries on the eastern side were getting ripe if not she'd have to make sure they got plenty of rainwater and made sure the soil was fresh.

The whole time she was checking on the berries her mind drifted towards the excitement of meeting the new neighbours. Alyson doesn't have many friends in her grade everyone claims she's a bit weird.

After making sure the berries were doing good, she went inside and noticed her family had disappeared. She dashed to the front of her house, the van disappeared. They'd left her. Alyson huffed disappointed. Disappointment, however, slowly turned into anger and then her blood started to boil.