I always knew the world would end. Eventually. I mean, anything could happen. A stray asteroid could collide with the planet. A nuclear war seemed inevitable, at times. We were also treating the environment like our own personal trash can. So many ways that it could have happened. Nobody would have guessed that the reason the world was in shambles was because of fire breathing dragons.

The day the world ended was like any other day of mine.

I was working at Emily's parent's museum. Emily had been my friend since we played soccer together when we were six. I usually worked at the museum in the summer so I could save up money. It was a pretty easy gig and the hardest part of the job was the tours and even those were not bad.

The time was 8:30 in the morning and I was waiting for a group of second graders to come for their tour.

"What do you mean you're not coming?" I was on the phone with Luisa. Luisa was our other friend. Emily and I became her friend when she moved in town and joined our team when we were ten.

I looked at Emily who was sitting next to me. She was reading a fashion magazine and rolled her eyes. I had the phone pressed against my ear, but Luisa was not the quiet type so Emily could hear everything.

Luisa faked a cough, "I'm sick."

"Oh my goodness, whatever. What, did you drink too much last night?" I asked. I usually did not talk on the phone while I was working, but no one but Emily was around so I figured it was fine.

"I wasn't going to. The plan was just a few drinks, but you know how I get."

"Unfortunately."

"My head is killing me dude. I woke up having to throw up, barely made it to the toilet. B*tch. It was red. Is that normal?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"Aren't you going to be a doctor or something?"

"I haven't even done a class in medical school yet. Calm down. Was it blood red or what?"

"Ummm. No, it was like artificial red."

"Look around the room. Is there anything that is colored red that you might have eaten?"

There was a pause as I assumed that she was looking. I looked at Emily and mouthed "can you believe her".

Emily rolled her eyes again.

"Oh sh*t! Haha there's an empty Takis bag."

"That'll do it. You still eat those?"

"I didn't think so. Maybe I did a 7/11 run last night. F*ck!" It sounded like she dropped her phone. The phone was still on the floor, but I could hear her saying "what are you doing here?" and then a man replied, "you called me over and told me to bring Takis". There was a pause before she said "Oh... Well. You can go now".

She then picked up the phone and said, "girllllll. Guess who I apparently called over and told to bring Takis."

I laughed, "who?"

"Michael, that guy from senior year who I grinded on at prom."

"No way, Blond Michael?"

"Yeah Blond Michael. His hair is still fake blond, in case you were wondering."

Emily then poked my shoulder and pointed outside. A yellow school bus pulled up at the front of the building. The front of the building was mostly made of glass so we could see the street from the front desk where we usually sat.

"The bus just pulled up," I told Luisa.

"Ew."

I was getting ready to hang up on her when I saw the doors open. An attractive man stepped out. He was way too attractive to be a teacher. He had short black hair and stubble on his jaw. His skin was golden brown.

"Oh my goodness," I breathed out.

"What?"

"There's a hot teacher."

"Shut the f*ck up! Really? Maybe I should have gone," I then heard her gag followed by footsteps to the bathroom.

"Make sure you keep hydrated. Love you!" after I said that, I could hear her throwing up in the toilet.

"Yeah, yeah. Love you, too. Tell Emily I'm sorry and that I love her," I heard her throw up again.

"Tell her she's fired," Emily said, still looking at the magazine. She was smiling, obviously joking.

I laughed and said, "she says she loves you too. Have fun!" I then hung up on her.

"I don't know how you put up with her like that. I hate throw up and you didn't even flinch when you heard it," Emily said.

"I guess I'm used to it. Back at school, I was always the 'mom'. My roommate was always throwing up, so I was always helping her," I said. That was true, but the reason I was always the designated sober person was because I had a high tolerance for alcohol. It always seemed like a waste of money since I needed a lot to get drunk.

The three of us went to different colleges. Emily stayed here and Luisa went to one in a nearby city. I went to a school across the state. We always kept in touch and met up during breaks.

I guess you could say that it's a miracle that we've been friends this long.

The kids were now in a line outside of the bus. They were in pairs of two. The teacher started walking towards the building. I was sure that Emily could not hear, but I heard him giving instructions to the kids. His voice was the right pitch, not too deep or too high.

"He is so hot," I said to Emily, "like, that's a man."

"You sound like a horny fifteen-year-old," she put down her magazine. She looked at the calendar that was on the desk, "they signed up for a two-hour tour."

"I'm not Luisa," I laughed, "I'll stay on time."

I stood from the desk and flattened out my dress. I started fixing my straight black hair, making sure there was not a strand out of place.

"You look great," Emily said, "just don't flirt that much, okay? I know I don't have to tell you but keep it professional. This is my future business after all."

"You mean to tell me that I can't give him a lap dance?" I asked with a smile on my face.

"Not in front of the kids. That's why we have bathrooms," she winked at me. I laughed and waved her off.

I walked around the desk and waited in the middle of the spacious room. I was standing in front one of the statues that was imported from Italy. It was of a veiled woman.

The man opened the door and smiled at me. It was like a polite smile, as if he was greeting me. He held the door open for the kids.

"Single line, guys," he said.

The kids walked in with wide eyes as they looked around. I heard some of the kids whispering to each other, "wow she's so pretty."

"Hi guys! My name is Elise," I smiled and waved at them.

All the kids greeted me with an enthusiastic "Hi, Miss". They were all so cute. I did not mind giving tours to little kids, they were always so excited. It was the opposite with middle and high schoolers. They always seemed bored.

After all the students walked in, the teacher walked around the kids who had formed into a semi-circle around me.

He walked up to me and shook my hand, "Hello, Elise. My name is Mr. Romano." He then leaned in closer to me and whispered, "but call me Luca."

I smiled at him and as I was going to reply, the students started "ooing".

Luca laughed and started hushing them, "please give Ms. Elise your full attention." He then walked behind the students.

"Thank you, Mr. Romano. I will be your tour guide today and show you around the International Museum of Art. Do you guys know what 'international' means?" I asked them. My tours for little kids were much different than how I would perform them for older kids.

A girl raised her hand.

"Yes, you. What's your name?" I smiled.

"Mia," she said, "international means when something is from a different place."

"Yes, Mia. That is a good way to say it. The majority of the art here is from different nations. This statue behind me, for example, is from Italy. It is called 'The Veiled Lady' and was sculpted by Giovanni Maria Benzoni in 1872. It is carved in marble," I said, "I'll be showing you guys some other cool things. Follow me."

I turned around and started walking into one of the other rooms. I made eye contact with Emily who was still sitting behind the front desk. She smiled and made a peace sign. I smiled back.

The rest of the tour was pretty straight forward. I took them to the majority of the different rooms. The rooms were categorized by nations. The last room I would be taking them to was interactive and kids loved going there. It was the end of the tour and they would be let loose in the room for about fifteen minutes.

The room was dark and played around with LED lights. There were curtains with patterns on them and when the curtains moved, the patterns changed. There was also a section that looked like it was on the bottom of the sea with coral and seaweed.

"Okay guys. You are allowed to touch the items in this room. I just ask that you are respectful of the items," I said.

"Yes ma'am!" the kids then quickly ran away to touch the curtains.

I sat down on one of the brightly lit benches and watched after the kids. Luca sat down next to me.

"Did you always want to be a teacher?" I asked. I wanted to talk to him and him sitting down next to me seemed like a sign that he wanted to talk to me back.

"No. When I was in high school, I thought I was going to be a professional baseball player," he smiled at me, "but then I tore my shoulder and realized that being a professional athlete was really risky and it would be hard to recover from shoulder surgery."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he was being really honest with me.

"It's okay. Looking back, I'm happy I changed my dream. Working with these kids is really fulfilling. It makes me feel like a good human being," he then quickly said, "that came out weird. I'm not, uh, trying to sound weird."

I laughed and waved him off, "its okay. I get it. I was just accepted into medical school. I want to be a doctor for the same reasons."

"Wow a doctor! That's really impressive. Did you just graduate from college?"

"Yeah I did. What about you?"

"I graduated last year. This is my first-year teaching."

"What did you think of it?"

"They have a lot of energy. It was hard at first trying to keep up."

"Mr. R! Come see this!" a young boy yelled.

"Some of them have a hard time saying my name," he said with a smile, "be right back."

He stood up from the bench and went towards the small group of boys who were near the coral.

I was left alone at the bench. The group of kids were not too bad. I have had worse. I could pick out the louder kids of the class. One boy who Luca was with right now was one of the louder kids. His name was Ryan. Ryan liked to point out every time Luca looked at me. He would say "teacher has a crush!". It was really cute how kids saw everything simplified. Of course, Luca would get embarrassed and would ask Ryan to stop talking. It came to a point where Luca had to purposely not look at me.

Of course, I thought Luca was cute. I would say yes if he later asked for my number.

"Hi, Miss," Mia, the girl who answered the first question, sat down next to me.

"Hi, Mia," I smiled at her, "is there anything I can help you with?"

"Mmm, not really. I just wanted to sit down," the girl smiled at me. One of her two front teeth was missing. That was cute. Mia had her curly dark brown hair in pigtails and was wearing a light pink shirt with hot pink denim shorts.

Mia seemed to be really smart as she answered a lot of the questions I asked today.

"Are you excited to be going into third grade?" I asked her. Even though I was no longer in school, I knew that the elementary schools still had about two weeks left.

"Not really. I'm going to miss Mr. Romano. He's my favorite teacher," she looked sad.

I patted her knee and smiled, "don't worry about that. I'm sure that you could still visit Mr. Romano."

"You think?" her face was lighting up, "I'll really be able to still see him?"

"Yes, of course," I was speaking as if I knew for sure. In reality, I was just hoping I was reading the situation right. Mr. Romano seemed like the type of teacher who would still be friendly with his students even if they were not in his class anymore.

"Miaaaa," two more girls walked up to us. I did not know their names.

"Nami, Mimi, Elise said we could still see Mr. Romano next year," Mia said. She was swinging her legs that were dangling off the bench.

"Really?" one of the girls said. She was wearing a shirt with a soccer ball on it and it said in all caps "GIRLS RULE". Her dirty blond hair was up in a pony tail. She seemed to be a tomboy.

"Yay!" the other girl said. She was wearing a simple black tank top with a denim jacket over it. She was also wearing jeans. Her light straight brown hair was French braided.

"This is Nami," Mia motioned to the tomboy.

"And I'm Mimi," the girl in denim said with a wide grin.

I was about to reply when the ground started shaking.

"An earthquake?" I mumbled. We did not get many earthquakes. Some of the kids started screaming and covered their heads with their arms. Above us, one of the neon chandeliers started to fall. I grabbed the three girls and dove to the side. The chandelier fell and smashed into the bench.

The girls were crying and covered their heads.

"It's okay. It's okay," I said, "I'm here."

"Mr. Romano! Get these kids to the lobby," I screamed.

"Follow me kids!" he screamed.

It was becoming really dark in the room since the light fixtures, the only source of light, were falling. I looked up at the ceiling and one of the bigger pieces was about to fall. I bear hugged the three girls and started sprinting. As we left the room, I scanned it to make sure there were no more kids. The three girls were still crying in my arms. I placed them down as we left the room. The large light piece fell and smashed into millions of shards.

Luca saw me carry the three girls and the look on his face read that he was confused on how I could pick up the three girls so easily.

I quickly looked away from him.

"What's going on?" Mimi was crying.

As I was about to say "earthquake", a loud roar erupted. It sounded just like the dinosaurs did in movies. The roar was so loud that the kids had to cover their ears.

For me, it sent chills down my spine and quickened my heart beat. I could feel the blood leave my face and I felt faint.

The roar ended, but the shaking continued.

"Elise!" Emily screamed from the front room, "Elise!"

"We're coming!" I screamed back.

"Cover your head and follow me!" I yelled and covered my head with my hands so they could mimic.

When we arrived to the front room, Emily was shaking as she pointed to the t.v. on the wall.

"What is it?" Luca asked worriedly.

I already knew what it was.

The news was on and the camera kept moving around as it captured the image of a fire breathing dragon destroying a part of the city.

"This is not fake! I repeat, this is not fake! That is an actual dragon! Stay inside!" a voice kept repeating in the background of the video.

"Oh, no. It's happening," I felt myself say underneath my breath.