Two Worlds (Written by a 10-year-old author, 62,000 words, 72 chapters)

Chapter 66: There's a dragon outside the window!

Lily rose from a restless sleep highly alert, looking around her bedroom. As she'd woken up, she had sensed something close by, breathing loudly. Puzzled, Lily opened the window to welcome the sunny day and almost immediately closed it again.

There was a dragon outside her window. It was staring straight ahead with a bored look on its gray face. But it wasn't the sight that made Lily slam the window closed: it was the downright disgusting odor of sweaty dragon that choked her. How long had the dragon been sitting outside her apartment? Five minutes? Five hours?

Lily found herself calling Tara – apparently, she had stolen an iPhone along with the paintball gun during the battle. Tara answered the call immediately: "Lily, it's ten in the morning. Why are you calling me?"

Lily ignored the question. "What are you doing?" "Having breakfast with Stacy and Jake in my kitchen." "Great. Listen. I'm in big trouble."

"And how exactly are you in big trouble?" Tara asked impatiently. "There's a dragon outside my window, okay? Sophie must've tracked me down."

From what Lily knew about her friend's personality, Tara was either rolling her eyes or panicking. Probably the first option - no, definitely the first option. "And why should I be worrying about that?" Tara inquired calmly. "Because, um ..." Lily's voice petered out as she noticed some background noise: the sound of a window opening, and then Jake's voice screaming, "THERE'S A DRAGON OUTSIDE THE WINDOW!" Moments later, Stacy broke the awkward silence. "Shut up, Jake, and don't say things like that while I'm eating!"

Apparently, girls could handle pressure a lot better than boys (at least, compared to Stacy and Tara handling pressure next to Jake). Lily heard a long burst of static and realized that Tara was sighing. "If it's that bad, I suppose I should check it out. If you can't get out, try getting out through the fire escape. I'll see you at the library unless something really bad happens - like the dragon eating the toilet, for example." A loud CRUNCHsloshSPLASH noise erupted from the phone. Lily stepped back in surprise, pressing her ear to the phone just in time to hear Jake wailing, "THE DRAGON ATE THE TOILET!"

Tara was definitely sighing into the phone again. "Well, if I can still get out of the hotel without paying for the damage in my hotel room and Jake's very obnoxious screaming, I'll see you at the library." "Tara, who are you calling?" Stacy's voice emitted through the phone, followed by a loud thud - Tara must've dropped the phone. Seconds later, Lily could hear Tara's voice yelling, "Oh, that is not good. Get out! GET OUT!" Tara said into the phone, "Lily, if you haven't hung up yet, the dragon just ate the whole bathroom and flooded the kitchen with toilet water. Bye."

Lily hung up and peered out the window to find that the dragon was still there. She would have to risk the fire escape anyway; her bedroom window was several floors above the front door, which meant she would come out facing the dragon's ... butt. Lily shuddered, stuffing her phone in her pocket as she dashed out the door. Five seconds later, she rushed back in, snatched her suitcase of special equipment from the far corner of the room, and ran back out again. With her luck, when the dragon attacked, her mother would remember the evacuation protocol. Then a thought occurred to her: her mom was already at work.

Ten minutes later, Lily yanked open the fire escape door before remembering that this newly installed fire escape stairway was faulty and led right to a door five feet away from the main entrance. She abandoned the stairs and headed for the older fire escape - a rickety old series of metal platforms attached to the wall with rusty ladders that had to be pulled down. Unfortunately, the metal platforms were only about two feet in width and forty years of no use had left the ladders creaky and squeaky.