A small white light penetrated the foreboding darkness of the rocky cave. Lena's head popped over the side of the cliff, her plain yellow headlamp casting a crude glow over the stalactites.

"I think I see something," Lena called down, crawling into the cave. "Are you almost up here?"

Alexis popped up beside Lena. "What do you see?"

"A little sparkle over there," Lena pointed into the black abyss of the cave's inner tunnels. The light from her headlamp lit up a few dismal gray stalagmites. Sure enough, something twinkled in the deep dark distance.

Lena helped Alexis over the edge, and both girls peered into the blackness. Alexis adjusted her own headlamp and the two began to creep quietly towards the sparkle.

"So, have you ever actually seen one of these things?" Alexis whispered. "Cus I saw the Animal Planet Lost Tapes episode about them and I read a couple books, so we should be really careful. They're nasty things. And they've got like a bajillion names cus they're all over the place and everyone calls 'em something different—there's some normal ones like 'cave demon' or 'death bat' but there's also some really cool foreign ones like 'Olititau' and there's one that I really like and that's 'Athol' cus the sound they make is like a-hool, or at least that's what the Animal Planet thing said. But like in Madagascar or someplace they call it 'Organ-Bati'. I don't know, I thought it just sounded sorta weird. Organ bat. I think I'm just gonna call them Athol cus that sounds cool. Plus, that's like the Indonesian name for them and that's kinda where we are now. Right?"

"Okay, I honestly don't know," Lena whispered back, "but chances are they're gonna wake up and eat us unless you shush."

"Oh," Alexis mouthed silently. "Sorry."

Lena looked up and her headlamp shone a dull glow over a few dismal gray stalagmites—and two huge, angry orange eyes.

The bat creature screeched and flapped its enormous wings.

"And then you yell something like to warn me or to taunt the creature," Alexis said animatedly. "So it screams at you and tries to bite you with its big ugly fangs, but you blast it back with a burst of white light from your palm. We both think it's defeated, but then it leaps up and screeches and knocks you aside with its ginormous wings. All hope seems lost, until I suddenly rush in with my epic ninja skills—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Lena said, waving her hands in an effort to calm Alexis' tongue. "Um, I don't think I caught the beginning part. Why are we in a cave again?"

"We're looking for a magical ancient artifact that will restore everyone's memories of you and what happened," Alexis explained. "Hidden deep within the caves of Monte Carlo. Wait, is Monte Carlo in Indonesia?"

"I think it's actually in Europe somewhere," Lena answered. "Also, since when did you have 'epic ninja skills'?"

Alexis shrugged.

It had been a week since Lena had returned home, and since then she had gotten another shot at her new school, with Alexis there to get her settled in and comfortable. Alexis had been Lena's closest friend at school, thanks to both Alexis' natural friendliness and their shared memories of the past experiences. The two had gotten together many a night after school to discuss everything from their stupid English teacher to ways to make Bradley and everyone else remember the lost adventure. Now they were fantasizing about the latter up in Lena's bedroom.

"Do you have any food?" Alexis asked suddenly. "I'm starving."

Lena got up off of the beanbag chair she had been slouching in for the past hour and trotted down the stairs into the kitchen, with Alexis on her heels. Lena opened the fridge and began looking for something for her friend to eat.

"There's some leftover pizza," Lena suggested. "Or some yogurt."

"Oo, what flavor?"

"Mostly just blueberry." Lena reached into the fridge and started shuffling the yogurt around, looking for another flavor. "Here's a key lime pie one. And a harvest peach."

"Key lime pie!" Alexis exclaimed. "That's my favorite flavor. I used to really like strawberry, but when I did that I had never had key lime pie before and so when I first tried it I was kind of didn't want to at first but then once I did I was like 'Omigosh that's sooo good!' and now it's my extreme favorite flavor. What's your favorite flavor of yogurt?"

"I like the pineapple upside-down cake flavor." Lena handed Alexis the yogurt and grabbed a container of blueberry for herself. She also grabbed the half-empty Little Caesar's pizza box and set it on the table. Finally she retrieved some spoons from the kitchen drawer and sat herself down.

Alexis took a few bites of her pale green yogurt and glanced at the pizza box.

"I wonder…" she said, licking her dry lips. Alexis reached across the table, opened the pizza box, took a slice of pepperoni pizza, and started dipping it in her yogurt.

"Ew," Lena said.

Alexis took a bite of her yogurt-covered pizza. "Hm. Pretty good. Lime-flavored yogurt on cold pizza—who knew?"

Lena laughed. "That is so gross."

"No grosser than caramel-covered chicken nuggets."

"Eww!"

"You seriously don't do that? Every time I go to McDonald's I get chicken nuggets and apple dippers and then I dip my nuggets in the caramel sauce. It's so yummy! Also I dip my French fries in my milkshake, and one time I had chocolate pudding on a ham sandwich. I actually got that idea from a book I read—Smiles to Go by Jerry Spinelli. Have you read that? It's really good but it was like the girl said she was sad there was no such thing as chocolate cake pizza and the narrator was like 'She's serious, I've seen her dip a ham sandwich in chocolate pudding before' so anyway I tried it and it was really really good."

"You're so weird."

The girls laughed and continued eating. Lena rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue whenever Alexis dipped her pizza in her yogurt.

"Alexis Charlotte Blaskenjoom, if you don't answer your phone right now I will totally go ninja on you!" shouted a new voice suddenly. Lena jumped, and Alexis grinned.

"That's just my ringtone," Alexis explained, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket as the sound repeated itself.

"Nice," Lena said.

Alexis looked at the screen and her eyes widened. "Hey, it's Bradley!"

"What?" Lena jumped up out of her chair to look at Alexis' caller ID. Sure enough, the words "Bradley Hutchinson" were running across the top of the screen.

"Should I answer it?" Alexis asked.

"Duh!" Lena exclaimed.

Alexis tentatively pressed the button and put her cousin on speakerphone.

"Hello?" Alexis said.

"Alexis?" said Bradley's voice. "When you called me on Wednesday, you said everyone was talking about magic and stuff. Does that include dragons?"

Both pairs of eyes widened.

"Um, dragons?" Alexis grinned. "Yeah. Why?"

"There's one on my front lawn. Calling my name."