Ugly Truth

1

"Give us five minutes to get set up."

The only one who's willing to film is Terrence Magony, and I'm pretty sure I won't do it if he spends too much time setting up.

I'm also pretty sure he would never have agreed if this didn't have the potential to send him to California.

"Okay, Ella we're rolling."

I take a deep breath, look into the lens. I'm determined to do it. I have to do it.

"Okay, hi. My name is Ella Russell. I'm a 10th grader, and I'm here to tell the full truth. I understand the consequence of sharing this and I'm totally fine with it, but before we get to the juice of the story let me start from the beginning.

"So I have a sister named Joanne. She has this long gorgeous blonde hair and a pair of green eyes, but not like the emerald city green, I'm talking subtle green. They're  still pretty though.

"I had a mom named Diana. She looked just like Joanne, minus the long blonde hair. She had short black hair and freckles. She had to wear glasses like I do.

"Lastly, I had a dad. His name was Lenny. He looked just like me except I have pretty blonde long hair like Joanne. He had black hair, a chin dimple, and black eyes.

"My mother, father, sister and I lived in a small apartment in a pretty shady town if you didn't know where you were. I went to school and did normal kid things then, eventually, our good luck ran out.

"My mom got laid off soon followed by my dad, and CPS started creeping about asking questions. Of course at this time I was pretty young about seven or something like that and my sister was five so my parents didn't tell us anything bad was happening.

"About a month or so after the second CPS agent quit lurking my mom sold everything inside the house. She sold our couch, the tv, coffee maker, toaster, picture frames and so forth. She sold everything except blankets, pillows and two mattresses. It was like a shell of a home.

"Then one day my dad came home and said he'd found a job. He didn't say what it was in front of us until he thought we were sleeping. He got a job selling drugs. It sounds pretty bad, but when you get to the point where feeding your family is a struggle you've got to do what you've got to do.

"Of course, my mom freaked out and asked him 'Well what if CPS comes back and hears this?' He completely agreed but it was too late. He was in too deep. Not really, but he didn't have any other choice.

"My parents never touched an ounce of the uh 'merchandise', and none of it was kept in the house. The money we were getting was barely enough to feed us; much less pay the rent so on October 23, 2008 we were kicked out of our house and onto the street."