One week later, Louise, Gene, Tina, and Bob were sitting in the living room when Linda came in with the mail.

Louise jumped up from her seat. "Anything for me?"

"No, sorry, sweetie, it's just bills," Linda said.

"Nuts," Louise said.

Bob looked at her. "You've been asking if there's any letters for you for the past week, Louise. What's going on?"

"Nothing," Louise said quickly.

Later, the kids gathered in Louise's room.

"What's taking them so long?" Gene wondered. "Don't you think they should have got back to us by now?"

"Maybe our letter got lost in the mail," Tina said. "We should call the magazine and ask them if they received it."

"Okay," Louise said. She went and got the phone. The National Truth's phone number was printed on the inside of the front cover. She dialed it.

"Eve Stropper," a deep voice said. "What is it?"

"Hi," Louise said. "I sent you a genuine UFO photo. Did you receive it?"

"Which UFO photo?" Eve Stropper said, unimpressed. "We get hundreds of UFO photos."

Louise described the photo and the envelope it was in. Eve Stropper put her on hold while she looked around her office. "Oh yeah, got it right here," Stropper finally said. "But something tells me your name isn't Herb Dunn. You don't sound like a 55-year-old man to me."

"I… uh… well…" Louise stammered.

"It doesn't matter, kid," Eve Stropper said. "You did a nice job on this picture."

"What do you mean?"

"Who's kidding who, kid? This picture is as phony as a three-dollar bill."

"How can you tell?"

"Because all UFO photos are phonies."

Louise's heart sank. Gene and Tina were looking at her, trying to figure out what was going on. "How much are they going to pay us?" Gene whispered.

"Then you won't print it?" Louise said into the phone.

"I didn't say that," Eve Stropper replied. "Kid, we print phony UFO pictures all the time. The only problem is we just ran a big UFO piece a couple of weeks ago. Didn't you see it? It was a story about aliens taking over the earth by hiding secret messages in McDonald's Happy Meal toys. You see, there's a secret code on the bottom of each toy. When three-year-olds see the toy, they go insane."

"But three-year-olds can't even read yet!" Louise said.

"Who cares? It was our best-sellin' issue since the one with exclusive photos of Jill Biden sneezing."

"That was news?" Louise asked, amazed.

"She had never been photographed in mid-sneeze before. Anyway, we can't run another UFO piece for a while. Try me again in about a year."

"A year!" Louise exclaimed. "That's like forever."

"Sorry, kid," Eve Stropper said. "If we ran UFO photos every week, they'd have no shock value. We'd lose our credibility. Readers would start to believe the pictures were faked."

"But your pictures are faked!"

"Well, we don't want them to know that," Eve Stropper said with a chuckle. "Hey kid, you sound like you're pretty bright. Did you shoot any pictures of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe lately?"

"Didn't they die a long time ago?" Louise asked.

"So what? They still sell papers. To their millions of fans, they live forever."

"No," Louise said. "I don't have any photos like that."

"Too bad. We haven't run a good Elvis sighting in a long time."

"Well, will you at least send my photo back to me?" Louise asked.

"Sure, whatever."

Louise hung up the phone. "They're not going to pay us a dime! They said they just ran a story about aliens and they can't run another one."

"I could put on a wig and pretend to be Marilyn Monroe," Gene said. "Then you could take a picture of me and send it to them."

"Well, I asked them to send us the UFO photo back," said Louise. "If they don't want it, somebody else will."

"Like who?" Tina asked.

Louise had a gleam in her eyes. "Like the local TV news! As soon as we get our picture back, we'll take it over to the TV station and show the people there. They'll never guess it's a fake!"