The Get Rich Quick Club (6 page)

A
s I expected, all the companies that were going to pay us millions of dollars bailed out of the deals as soon as they heard the news that our UFO photo was a phony. All the reporters and camera crews and UFO nuts who had invaded Farmington cleared out of town like it was radioactive. Nobody wanted to interview us anymore.

We had already bragged to all the kids we knew, telling them what we were going to do with the money we were going to make, so they made fun of us pretty badly. We were the laughingstock of Farmington.

For days, I couldn't bring myself to speak to Rob. I was so angry at him for leaking the news that I was
afraid I might hit him or throw something at him.

But as August passed and I started to think about school again, I saw Rob at the supermarket. For a moment, I thought about ducking out of there before he could see me, but I decided that would be cowardly.

“Look, I'm sorry I yelled and everything,” I told him. “I was a jerk.”

“I'm sorry too, Gina,” Rob said. “I should have thought about you guys before doing what I did.”

We agreed that we should have one last meeting of the Get Rich Quick Club, so we could officially shut down the company and clear our stuff out of the gazebo. Rob said that he and his mom were going to buy his back-to-school supplies and soccer gear that afternoon, so we agreed to hold the meeting that night. I said I'd pass the word to Quincy and the Bogle twins.

 

It was a beautiful night. Not a cloud in the sky. Just one big, round moon. While I waited for the others to arrive at the gazebo, I stared up at the stars. The little
chill in the air said that fall was coming. Soon the leaves would start turning colors. The days were beginning to get noticeably shorter.

The others were probably thinking I was going to scream and yell about how we had blown millions of dollars, but I had gotten over my anger. Even though we hadn't gotten rich, the Get Rich Quick Club had accomplished a lot.

“We were a great team,” I began when everyone had arrived. “Quincy, we couldn't have done it without you. You figured out how to make a UFO photo that would fool the world. We couldn't have done it without Teddy or Eddie either. You were the ones who got us on TV and made us famous.”

They beamed up at me like angels. I don't think they ever fully realized exactly what we had done, or what had gone wrong.

“And Rob, well, if it hadn't been for you, we never would have come up with the crazy idea in the first place.”

“We couldn't have done it without you either, Gina,” Rob replied. “You were the leader. None of this
would have come together if we didn't have you as our CEO.”

It was true, and I appreciated that he said it.

“Well.” I sighed, unlocking the metal box. “I guess we'd better divvy up the company assets.”

There were fifteen dollars in the box. We paid back Quincy the $10.95 she had spent for film, plus the sixty cents she owed her dad for postage. That left $3.45. Rob divided that by five on the calculator from the metal box and came up with sixty-nine cents. Luckily, he had a lot of change in his pockets, so we changed some of the dollar bills, and I handed out the right number of coins to everyone. Then I tore up the last profit and loss statement and dropped it into the box.

“Wow!” The twins marveled as they examined the coins. To them, sixty-nine cents was just about as good as a million dollars.

“Well, that's that,” I said, gathering up my stapler, Scotch tape, and other office supplies that I had brought from home. I tore my photo of Bill Gates into little pieces.

“I'm knackered, mates,” Quincy said. “Gotta go
stack some zzzzs. See you in the soup!”
¹

The moment after she said that, there was a flash of bright light in the sky just above the horizon. I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

“By jingoes! What was
that
?” Quincy asked.

“It must be a plane,” I said.

“That was no plane,” Rob insisted. “Planes can't fly like that.”

“Maybe it was a shooting star,” suggested Teddy.

“I don't think so,” Rob said.

Then, right behind us, we saw it. It was a shiny metallic object, shaped sort of like an egg, but about the size of an elevator. It hovered over the field for a moment, and then it swooped down until it rested gently on the grass not more than twenty feet from where we were sitting.

I
t was like nothing I had ever seen before. The egglike thing had no lights. We could see it only by the light of the moon. It didn't make any noise. It had come down silently, as if it had cut off its engine and coasted the rest of the way.

“Stone the crows!”
¹
Quincy whispered as we stared at the thing. “It's…a UFO.”

“Everybody stay calm,” I said, but I felt my teeth chattering, and the little hairs were standing up on my arms.

“I'm scared,” Eddie said, huddling against his brother. “Maybe we should call nine-one-one.”

“I gotta pee,” Teddy said.

“This UFO looks a lot better than ours did,” Rob commented.

“Deadset it does, boofhead,”
²
Quincy told him. “It's
real
.”

“You think there's anybody in there?” Teddy wondered. “Or any
thing
?”

“Who knows?” I replied. “Where's the camera?” If we could get a photo of a
real
UFO, it occurred to me, we could make our money all over again and even Rob would feel good about it.

Quincy dug out the camera from a pile of junk. But when she clicked the button, nothing happened.

“The thingamajigger is jigged!”
³
she exclaimed, giving the camera a whack on its side.

“Maybe there's no film in it,” Rob guessed.

“Put a new pack of film in!” I barked. “Quick, before the UFO flies away!”

“We don't have any bloody film!” Quincy said in a panic. “Remember, you told me to blow the film shooting the
fake
UFO!”

“What should we do?” Eddie whimpered, almost crying.

“Let's run!” Quincy suggested.

“My legs won't move,” Rob said. We were all paralyzed with fear.

“I think I just peed in my pants,” Teddy moaned.

“Me too,” said Eddie.

Suddenly an oval hole opened up on the side of the UFO. A disk about the size of a manhole cover slid out like a platform and floated in the air next to the ship.

“Somebody's in there,” Quincy whispered.

Then a thing stepped out of the UFO and onto the disk. It was about twelve feet tall. Hairy. Three arms. The disk floated along silently about a foot off the ground. The Bogle twins wrapped themselves around my legs so tightly that I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to.

“Say something,” Rob whispered to me.

“
You
say something.”

“You're the CEO.”

It turned out that I didn't have to say anything. The creature spoke first.

“Greetings from the planet Bettendorf,” it said, in an accent somewhere between English and Spanish.

“Are…y-you going to…k-kill us?” I stammered.

“No.”

I felt myself exhale.

“As long as you cooperate with me.”

I inhaled again.

“I have been visiting your planet for many revolutions around the sun,” the hairy thing said. “Now I have returned.”

With one of its hands, the thing reached into its own stomach—or the place where its stomach would be, anyway—and pulled out a machine about the size of a telephone. We all gasped.

“Wh-what are you going to do with that?” Rob blubbered. “Are you going to perform bizarre medical
experiments on us?”

“Don't give it any ideas, dipstick,” Quincy muttered.

“No,” the alien replied. “I have come here to take something and bring it home with me.”

“Anything,” I offered. “Take anything. Just don't hurt us.”

“Good,” the thing said. “I am going to take…your picture.”

“What?!”

“Why do you want to take a picture of us?” I asked. The answer was a flash of light that shot out of the machine the thing was holding.

“Hey, wait!” Eddie said. “You didn't give us the chance to say cheese!”

“Quiet, gumby!” I said.

“Bettendorfers do not believe there is intelligent life on other planets. But I have proof. I can sell this photo and make millions of zlotys.”

I didn't know what zlotys were, but it sounded like money to me. Now he had me interested. I took a step forward.

“How about giving us a million or two?” I asked.

“Zlotys are balls of dust,” the thing informed us.

“You use dustballs for
money
?” Rob asked.

“Bettendorf has no atmosphere,” the thing explained. “So dust is virtually nonexistent on my planet. That is why it is so valuable.”

The Bogle twins looked at each other. They nodded their heads at the same time, and then Teddy picked up his box of dust and handed it to the alien.

“This is a present,” he said. “Five years' worth of dust from my mommy's dryer.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You'll be the richest one on Bettendorf.”

“Thank you,” the thing proclaimed. “I must go now.”

The disk began to rise.

“Wait!” Rob called. “You could come to the Earth and photograph
anybody
. Why did you choose us?”

The thing stopped.

“I carefully select the earthlings I choose to photograph,” it said. “There is only one kind of earthlings I choose.”

“What kind of earthlings are they?” Rob asked.

“Earthlings who have been caught making fake UFO photos.”

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“Because when you tell others about this, nobody will ever believe you.”

The disk began to move back toward the spaceship.

“Wait!” Rob called once again. “How about telling us the secret of the universe or something?”

The disk that the thing was standing on was now next to the large oval hole in the spaceship. The thing turned to us once more.

“Inky…dinky…pinky,” it said.

And then it was gone.

W
e saw it!” we all shouted as we burst, huffing and puffing, into Brian McNight's office at the
Farmington Journal
. “This time we saw it for real!”

“Oh no,” he said, slapping his forehead. “Not
you
again.”

“Mr. McNight, we swear we saw it!” Rob pleaded.

“Sure, sure. What did you see this time? Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monster?”

“No, this time we
really
saw a UFO.” Rob was practically on his knees.

“I suppose you have more phony pictures too?” Mr.
McNight snorted. “Did you shoot some fake video this time?”

“No, but the alien took a picture of
us
!” I explained.

“And we gave it our collection of dust,” added Teddy.

“Get out of here,” Mr. McNight said, getting up from his chair. “You kids are annoying. You made a monkey out of me once. It's not gonna happen again.”

“It came out of its ship and talked to us!” Rob begged. “You've got to believe us!”

“Yeah, and I suppose it said ‘inky dinky pinky,' right?”

“Yes!” we all yelled. “That's the secret of the universe!”

“Did you ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf?” Mr. McNight said as he led us out of his office. “Well, you're the kids who cried UFO. Now go on home and play with your toys. I've gotten into enough trouble because of you.”

 

Well, so ends the story of the UFO scam. Before we knew it, it was September and time to go back to school. In thinking about it, I guess it wasn't such a
boring summer after all. Maybe I didn't get to go to camp. Maybe I didn't make a million dollars (I didn't even make
one
dollar). But I had a blast with Quincy, Rob, Teddy, and Eddie. Plus I got to meet an alien from another planet. How many kids could say that?

Besides, I learned a valuable life lesson—have an extra pack of film with you at all times.

 

After school let out on the first day, I went outside and climbed up the tree in the field, just for old times' sake. As I sat there thinking about what might have happened if we had pulled off the UFO scam, Quincy and Rob drifted over. Eventually the Bogle twins showed up too. It was almost as if we had been drawn back to the spot where it all started.

“Look at it this way,” Rob said as we sat in the tree. “We started out with no money, and we ended up with no money. So in the cosmic scheme of things, it was like none of this ever happened.”

I didn't know what he was talking about, but it didn't matter.

“Maybe we could mow some lawns, or wash cars,”
Teddy suggested. “It wouldn't be a lot of money, but a dollar here and a dollar there adds up.”

“If we earned a dollar a day, how long would it take us to earn a million dollars?” I wondered.

Quincy pulled a calculator out of her pocket and punched in the numbers.

“Two thousand seven hundred thirty-nine and three quarters years,” she said. Everybody groaned.

“We had a brilliant idea that came
so
close to making us millions of dollars,” I said. “There are plenty of ideas like that out there. They're just floating around, waiting for somebody to think them up.”

“Professional athletes earn millions of dollars,” Teddy said. “Maybe we could do that.”

“None of us are any good at sports,” Eddie told his brother.

“I got it!” I exclaimed, snapping my fingers. “One of us could fall down on the sidewalk in front of a store and sue them!”

“That's even more dishonest than shooting fake UFO pictures,” Rob said with a stern look.

“We could get some scratchies,”
¹
Quincy suggested.
“Maybe we'd win.”

“Fat chance of that ever happening,” I scoffed. “You might as well stuff your scratchies up your ears.”

“Wait a minute!” Rob exclaimed. “Say that again!”

I looked at him.

“All I said was, ‘You might as well stuff your scratchies up your ears.'”

Rob hopped off the branch and paced back and forth on the ground like a tiger. He had that wild, excited, mad-scientist look in his eyes. When we tried to talk to him, he held his hand up for us to wait until he was done thinking.

“I've got it!” he finally shouted, gleefully.

I knew another one of his million-dollar ideas was on its way.