Middle Child

                                                       

It was a cold night in the middle of June, you could hear crickets chirping, and owls hooting in the distance. It was around 9:00 PM and I was sent out to the barn to go grab some hay for the goats. I know it was weird that it was that late at night, but it was really cold out, around 35 degrees, and my mom always worried for our animals––maybe even more than us. But when I got into the barn and walked towards the little bin where we keep the hay, the room was musty, and the feeling of constantly being awarded second place infiltrated my nose. Always being the middle child is hard, it's like I have to do everything and still finish second. No one really cares about what happens to the middle child. My younger brother could make a funny face and still get all the love, like he’s in first place, while I work and still get treated like second place, now back onto the story. It smelled like a dying animal, so I went back into the corner of the barn and there I saw a rat in a rat trap that my father had set up a few days ago. It must have been there for days.