Thalia Wessel was on her way to water polo practice. “Oh, hurry up Loraine!” she shouted excitedly. Loraine, who was her best friend, grunted and caught up with her. They walked for a few more minutes. Thalia looked up at the sky. “Wow, Loraine! Look at the sky. It’s so pretty when it looks like this at dusk!”
Loraine glanced up at the violet sky. Thalia was right; it really was beautiful.
Thalia gasped. “Oh my gosh, what on earth is that?” Thalia gasped again and pointed at the sky. Loraine looked up and saw what appeared to be an increasingly larger glowing thing hurdling straight at them. “It’s heading straight towards us! Quick, get behind something!” screamed Thalia.
Luckily, the girls were walking through an old abandoned amusement park and there was no one around. There were plenty of old booths and trees and trashcans to hide behind. The girls both hid behind a large oak tree. They braced themselves as the object crashed with an oddly quiet skidding noise. After another minute of hiding, Thalia and Loraine came out from behind the tree. “What is it?” questioned Thalia as she moved it with her foot.
Suddenly, the thing stirred to life. The girls jumped back behind the tree. A weird, paper-like geometrical object stood up from the rubble. Loraine noticed it was as black as midnight with sharp blue eyes and the very tip of its head was bright red. Its body seemed to be divided in to sections. There were several thick, even darker lines on its face and body. The two girls stood in awe as the creature looked around.
Thalia whispered to Loraine: “We should try to be friendly with it!” Loraine thought this was a ridiculous idea, but of course before she could say anything against it, Thalia was creeping out from behind the oak tree.
“My name is Thalia. TAL-EE-UH. What is your name?”
“Thalia, stop it! You look ridiculous! That thing can’t understand you!”
“Who ever said that? You don’t know that it can’t speak any English!”
“Well, maybe it knows Chinese or Taiwanese or Portuguese or some language you don’t know!”

As the girls were arguing, the being looked up at them. It was short, about 2’5. It slowly approached the girls, and suddenly, without warning, gave them both a big hug around their legs. Loraine screamed and kicked it off her leg, and Thalia laughed and pried it off her leg. It looked up blankly at Loraine, who was trembling with fear.

Thalia called her water polo coach and told him that she wasn’t coming. As the girls and the thing walked home, Thalia suddenly blurted out “I’ve come up with a name for him!” Loraine looked highly unamused.
“You’re calling it a him?”
“Yeah, do you want to hear the name I came up with?”
Silence.
“Well, since you’re being so negative about it, I’ll tell you anyway. His name is Prism!”
Loraine glanced at Prism and then at Thalia. She couldn’t take either of them any more. Prism was just creeping her out, and Thalia had been talking about him like he was her new best friend, even though she had only known him for about 12 minutes.
Soon the girls arrived at their apartments. “Good night, Loraine! Here, Prism can stay in my apartment, seeing that you hate him so much.” said Thalia bitterly. Loraine eyed her angrily and slammed her apartment door shut.

Of course, Thalia’s workaholic parents had no idea that their daughter had brought an alien from outer space inside their apartment. Thalia made more effort to communicate with Prism, but after many failed attempts, she decided to go to sleep. “Good night, Prism.” Thalia murmured as she watched Prism poke himself in the eye with a pencil. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to hurt him. Thalia turned off her lamp and tried to go to sleep. A few minutes later, however, she turned on the lights again because she heard Prism scratching at something. She looked over and saw him sitting on the ground with a pencil and a stray piece of paper. He was drawing something. It appeared to be some kind of house. “Don’t worry, Prism,” she said, seeing the sadness in his eyes, “We’ll get you home.”

The next day, Thalia flew out of bed, threw her clothes on, and dashed out the door with Prism not far behind. Her parents, too busy with their work, didn’t notice Prism, again. Thalia dashed down to Loraine’s apartment and rapidly knocked on her door. An angry Loraine stood on the fuzzy “Welcome!’ mat in her pajamas. Before she could say anything, Thalia grabbed her, and the two girls and alien crashed down the stairs. Thalia pulled Loraine and Prism to the old junkyard right outside their apartment complex.
“Thalia, what’re you doing! You-“ she was cut off by Thalia before she could continue.
“We’re launching Prism into space using a catapult so that he can get home.”
“That won’t work, it’s impossible!”
“He can survive extreme conditions.”
Loraine didn’t feel like arguing, so she stumbled back to her apartment and looked up “How to build a catapult that can launch paper in to space.” She went on some superstitious website and found the materials and instructions list. She really didn’t feel like it was going to work, but she gave the list to Thalia anyway. Thalia quickly scanned the list. “We have everything we need.” she said solemnly.

Several hours later, Loraine and Thalia finished the catapult. Prism got in the spoon-like part. The instructions said to drop something heavy on to the ”pump”, which would somehow launch Prism in to space. Loraine found that she really didn’t want Prism to leave. The girls hugged him goodbye, and they dropped a large, heavy pile of bricks on the pump. It sent Prism flying. It appeared that he was about to crash in to a building, but suddenly he seemed to transform in to something that looked like a very aerodynamic paper airplane. The girls stood in awe as they watched him fly at great speeds out of sight. A few minutes later, the girls walked back to their apartments.
Later that night, Thalia and Loraine had dinner and immediately went to sleep. They dreamed of Prism and the adventure they had had the day before. They never saw Prism again.