"They had an elaborate hoax."

Check out this Chicago Tribune article about an extraordinary series of lies recently uncovered in southern Illinois. Imagine if Neil LaBute teamed up with Ashton Kutcher: It's certainly more interesting than The Shape of Things.

I read the first three paragraphs and thought I knew where this was going. I was wrong.

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The stocky, buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant's little girl--a precocious, blond-haired child they'd grown to love--was now an orphan.

They all knew that Kodee Kennings' mother had died when Kodee was about 5. The little girl's fears and frustrations about her father being in harm's way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in gut-wrenching letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why Daddy wasn't there to chase the monsters from under her bed.

It turns out Daddy didn't exist. And neither did Kodee.