Flashes of light dance in my pupils as I try to find the constellations I remember. The humidity sticks to my skin and I hear my dog sniffing noisily at the grass. Two in the morning is the best time for him to frolic, and we've spent countless nights just like this, with him trying to catch fireflies, then remembering how awful they are and spitting them right back out, and me looking at the sky, trying to find something. I have always loved the sky since I always felt like an alien. No matter how good my camouflage is, people always seem to sniff out that I'm different, even when I didn't know it. Now I know it, and it makes me feel closer to the stars.

I look down for a brief moment to see my dog racing towards me with a stick in his jaws. He's smiling brightly, rewarding himself for a good nightly poo with a stick. I take it from him and throw it and watch him race back to find it. All the kings are looking down at me right now, according to the Lion King. I wonder if they look down at me like I look up at them. I wonder if their eyes fill with amazement and tears when they realize that they made me and everything I do and am. If high school was any indication, they don't.

I peer up again. The wind is picking up and the stars are beginning to be covered by the clouds of the storm that's coming tomorrow. I call my dog, who comes racing over with his recovered stick, and we head towards the door. I look up at the sky again, see the moon and all the stars twinkling behind a layer of grey and shake my head. I have to spend more time looking at my eyelids than stars one of these nights.