Being Ellie Aniston

Ch. 5 ~ Trouble

We we only about ten minutes into the process of tping, but I was pretty proud of our work. I mean, the entire tree was almost white, and we even managed to get it up onto the roof. In the middle of wrapping around a picture perfect hedge, the window upstairs in the front of the house lit up. When I first went to this house at age eight, I had snuck in there and gone through my step mom's things. Familiar place.
"Oh crap," I whispered. Those in the master bedroom had not gone to bed yet. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
I looked over to my right to see Jade standing on the marble wall on the side of the house, in an attempt to cover up the roof even more.
"Get down!" I whispered, frantically waving my hands.
"What?" She replied, obviously very into what she was trying to do.
"We have to go!!" I was losing my patience. We were going to be caught.
She mouthed the word "no" to me and then brought her arm behind her head, ready to throw.
It seemed as though what happened next was in slow motion. By lifting up one leg, she fell into a bush, causing a huge cracking sound.
Without thinking, I yelled, "RUN!!"
She scrambled to get up, and with horror, I realized that I had left the keys inside the car.
"The keys are in the car!" I pulled Jade a couple houses down, looking inside the drivers seat.
"We have to go Ellie. If we wake up early enough tomorrow morning we can find the second pair of keys and then come back and unlock it!"
"Let's go," I breathed, and began pounding my feet on the sidewalk in an effort to get away.
"Who's there?" I heard a loud voice maybe ten years behind us. A voice that belonged to my father, Brad Pitt.
I didn't think to stop and maybe explain that we were just joking around. My only thought was to run all the way home.
As we turned the corner out of the neighborhood, the horrible thought came to my head.
He knows what my mom's car looks like from the times she's dropped me off at his house. I could only hope he wouldn't notice and just go back inside to his wife, deciding to clean it up in the morning.
Boy, was I wrong.
~
It was about 2:15 AM when we finally arrived home. Running took about an hour. Much worse than the ten minute drive. We were too nervous to joke around. So we sat on my queen-sizes bed waiting to go find the keys.
I was drifting off around 2:30 when I heard my mom's ringtone go off, as clear and as loud as a bell.
I cursed for only Jade to hear, and we snuck down the hallway so that we could hear the conversation. I had a sick feeling that it was my dad. Who else that has Jennifer Aniston's number calls her in the middle of the night?
"Hello?" I heard her ask, yawning.
Long pause.
"My car? Why would my car be at your house, Brad?"
Another long pause.
"She can't even drive!"
I knew that "she" was me, Ellie Aniston.
"This has nothing to do with my parenting!" I could hear her voice rising in anger.
"She'll come clean it up in the morning."
Pause.
"Maybe she thought it would be funny. You're not even involved enough to care."
Or I wanted to get you back for cheating on my mom. But being funny works too.
"Goodnight Brad."
We walked back to my room as silently as we could and then crawled into bed, as if this would make the whole thing go away.
What worried me was the crying come from my mom's bedroom. What was the big deal? It was a joke, and I was going to be taking the fall. But the more I thought about it, it WAS a big deal. He would tell Angelina this. He could tell a tabloid this. I embarrassed my mother and her reputation. She would never do anything like this. Maybe as a teenager, but not as a teenager with the life that I have. With the public watching my every move. I felt the tears streaming down my face as I drifted off to sleep.