Lucy closed the front door behind her, which rattled on its hinges under the intense vibration. In fact, the entire house was rattling. Can you imagine a hundred helicopters swirling around over your house with a whopping great drilling machine, ready to blast in through your ceiling at any moment?

No, thank you very much! Sounds absolutely awful, doesn’t it?

Lucy ran upstairs, leaping up two or three steps at a time.

Faster, Lucy! Faster! she commanded herself.

She burst into her bedroom. Her bed lay like a bridge over the large wormhole leading down to the Woleb, her mattress still leaning against her bedroom wall. She quickly drew the curtains, shutting out the sunlight, and threw her mattress down onto the bed, casting everything underneath it into deep, dark shadows.

The instant the darkness returned, Lucy saw the most incredible thing happen. The hole started swirling and shrinking, like the way water goes down the drain in the bath.

The darkness was healing the damage she had done.

Suddenly the whole room started shaking. Lucy wobbled and stumbled to her knees. Her bedside table tipped over, and her books flew off their shelves. Her jelly-bean-eating-competition certificate fell off the wall, and the frame shattered on the floor. Her sock drawer slid open, sending socks flying everywhere! It was mayhem.

Then came the worst sound of all.

It was a sound like she’d never heard before.

And why would she?

It was the sound of the roof being ripped right off her house.

Giant, shiny silver teeth sliced into the Dungstons’ roof, drilling right into Lucy’s bedroom.

Lucy glanced at the door—but there wasn’t time to make a run for it now. The drill was coming down. There was no escape. Below her was the shrinking entrance to the Woleb; above her, the menacing metal teeth of the whopping great drilling machine.

Lucy was caught in the middle. Right between grown-ups and Creakers.

And, just like that, the whole ceiling suddenly came right off.

All the roof shingles, the bricks, her glow-in-the-dark stars: everything went swirling into the shimmering, spinning jaws of the mighty military drill.

Lucy felt sunlight fall on her face, and for a moment she understood what it must feel like to be a Creaker. That heart-stopping dread of your world about to be turned to dust. Although it wasn’t the sunlight itself that would be turning Lucy to dust—it was the screeching drill, getting closer and closer every second.

Lucy looked around. The sight before her was so mind-bogglingly weird. Her bedroom had four walls—and NO ceiling. There was just a great big hole overhead, filled only by the approaching Creaker-killing machine and the whirring of helicopter blades.

The drill suddenly dropped lower, eating up the walls of Lucy’s room too. The windows smashed. The curtains got sucked into the grinding teeth, and a tornado of bricks turned to rubble as they tumbled down into the yard below.

Lucy was now standing in her bedroom with no ceiling above her and no walls around her. It was just her and her bed, completely open to the outside world.

“LUCYPOPS!” a voice called out over the screaming of the drilling machine, and Lucy caught a glimpse of her father and mother at the end of her street, waving at her desperately. It wasn’t just them being held back by the military. Norman was there with his dad. Ella stood with her mama. The whole of Whiffington had gathered in a great crowd. Even the Wakey-Wakey, Whiffington cameras were rolling, ready to capture the destruction of the Woleb.

It was at that moment, standing beneath a hundred helicopters with a giant drill a few inches away from her head, being watched by the entire population of Whiffington Town, that Lucy realized something.

Something very weird.

She wasn’t scared.

Of course, it was terrifying to have a whopping great drill rip off your roof and dangle a few inches from your head, about to be dropped at any moment right on the spot you’re standing in—but somehow Lucy had come to realize that what she was about to do was bigger than being scared. More important than feeling frightened.

She was standing up for what she believed in. Putting the lives of others before her own. Lucy had been prepared to risk everything to save the grown-ups from the Creakers—and now she was risking it all to save the Creakers from the grown-ups.

“STOP!” she shouted.

But the machine kept drilling. Getting lower and lower.

“STOP DRILLING!!!” she called.

the machine replied.

Lucy realized that screaming was no good. She had to be seen. She stood up on her bed, making herself as tall and as big as she possibly could. She raised her open palms toward the drill, and this time she demanded that it obey her.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” she ordered.

With a great

and a PSHHHHHH! the whopping great drilling machine came to a sudden halt.

Lucy stared up at the sharp metal face of the drill. Its pointy tip was barely an inch from her open hand.

“Raise the drill!” echoed an angry voice through a megaphone from one of the helicopters above.

The choppers’ engines roared as they lifted the drill out of the Dungston family’s home.

“Well, what is it, Sergeant?” the voice echoed down from above again, and Lucy recognized it now. It was Mayor Noying—Ella’s dad. He was hanging out of the side of one of the great helicopters, peering down with a stern frown across his forehead.

“It’s…it’s the girl, sir!” the nervous sergeant replied.

“A girl?”

“No! THE girl. The one who rescued us all from the Woleb.”

“It’s me, Lucy!” Lucy shouted back up at the WAF choppers through the megaphone she’d confiscated. “Lucy Dungston, and this is my home!”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, Lucy, get out of the way! We’ve got to get rid of those disgusting vermin down there,” the mayor demanded.

But Lucy didn’t get out of the way. She sat down on her bed and folded her arms.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “If you want to kill those poor little creatures, you’ll have to chomp me up with your drill too.”

There was silence. (Well, apart from the sound of all the helicopters, obviously.)

Then a rope suddenly dropped down through Lucy’s open ceiling. Lucy looked up to see the mayor whizz down the rope from the chopper, his chunky golden chain and pointy hat flapping in the breeze.

“Now, listen here, little girl,” he boomed into his megaphone seconds before he landed, his shiny boots clomping on her bedroom floor.

“No. YOU listen,” Lucy said into her own megaphone, standing up on her bed so that she was just as tall as the very cross mayor. “I’m not moving from this spot. This is my room. My home. And you’ve got no right to come flying over here with your big chompy machine and slice off my ceiling.”

“But—but—” the mayor stuttered. He’d never been spoken to like this by any child other than Ella before, but that was usually about lumps in her mashed avocado or staying up late.

“No buts,” Lucy continued. “This isn’t just my home. This is their home too.” She pointed down to the shadows beneath her bed.

“But those things snatched us all away! They nearly turned us all into messy, silly children!” the mayor spluttered.

“Yes. And that was wrong of them. But you are as much to blame as they are.”

“What?!”

“You heard me!” Lucy’s voice blasted out loud and clear for all of Whiffington to hear. “You, me, and every single person here in Whiffington. We’re just like those creatures. They have homes. They have families. And they’re sick and tired of watching us dump all our trash when they can turn it back into something useful. Our garbage can give a Creaker child a bed. It can build a family a home. It can even power a whole city! If only we could work together instead of trying to snatch or destroy each other. We might look different, and we might not see the world the same way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all live on it and under it together. Peacefully. Happily!”

Lucy looked out from her crumbling bedroom to the crowd gathered at the end of her street. They were listening to every word she said—and she saw lots of them nodding.

“But—but this is madness. You can’t listen to her! She’s just a child,” the mayor pleaded to Whiffington.

“That’s right. I am a child. Just a kid. The kid who saw you running NAKED through Creakerland.”

The mayor looked out to see Ella and Mrs. Noying standing in the crowd. Ella put her heart-shaped sunglasses on and acted like she didn’t know him.

“The kid who brought you all back to your families,” Lucy continued. “The kid who knows that if we drill this hole, we’ll destroy the Creakers forever.”

The mayor said nothing. He was dumbstruck by Lucy’s words. Lucy was seeing the world far more clearly than any grown-up had for a very long time.

The mayor bowed his head in shame.

“Lucy, I’ve been a fool,” he sighed, removing his tricorn hat and placing it on Lucy’s head. “You have reminded us all that sometimes children can see the truth that grown-ups have forgotten how to see.”

He lifted the megaphone to his mouth. “Call off the whopping great drill!” he ordered with a wave of his hand, and the helicopters instantly flew the machine away.

“We’ve been complete fools, haven’t we?” the mayor said to Lucy.

“No, you’ve just been grown-ups.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea what we should do next?” asked the mayor sheepishly. He’d never had to ask anyone what he should do before—especially not a kid.

Lucy looked around at the mess she was standing in. There were no walls, no ceiling, no wardrobes. Just Lucy, the mayor, and her bed.

Lucy smiled.

“What is it?” the mayor asked.

“I think I have an idea.”