"Were you okay, earlier today?"

Kira looked up from the dragon lore book. Spread out on the floor in Galileo's room, the door opened for his step-mom's preference, she and Galileo had been reading while he played an experimental album he had recorded using GarageBand on his laptop.

"I saw someone I didn't want to." She didn't want to lie to Galileo.

"Who?"

"Someone who approached my dads last weekend," Kira said. She scrunched up her nose, trying to think of an excuse. "In a group of his friends. They didn't say nice things."

"I'm sorry." Galileo hesitated. "I know how they feel."

"Oh." Kira sat up straight. She knew she was socially awkward, but she'd thought— "I didn't know you were gay."

"Not exactly." He closed his own book, a tome about gryphons. "Bi."

"Oh." Maybe she wasn't wrong. "That's cool."

They fell into a silence, but it wasn't entirely uncomfortable. There were so many questions Kira wanted to ask. And they weren't about dragons, or the many other strange magical creatures Galileo had collected books about and models of.

She wanted to know everything about him— but where do you start?

His step-mom leaned into the doorway. "Hi, Kira, sweetie. Everything okay?"

Kira nodded.

"We're making spaghetti for dinner," she said. "Do your dads want to come?"

"No, I think I better get going." Kira scrambled to her feet, and she looked to Galileo. "Thanks. I had fun here."

"If you want to come over again later, I'm getting out my telescope," he said cheerily. "It's supposed to be a clear night."

"I'd like that," Kira decided.

"So, we start by looking for Polaris," Galileo said. "It's pretty easy to find— first you've got to find Ursa Major—"

"You mean the Big Dipper?" Kira thought of what Seth had once taught her when they'd looked at the stars while searching for Bigfoot when she was a little girl. 

"Right, I keep forgetting that you know all this stuff, too," Galileo admitted sheepishly. "No one else I know is really interested in any of this."

"Well, I'm interested," Kira said. She hoped that she could impress the great many meanings of that phrase upon him. 

"So, I think Draco is over there—"

"I think I see it." She squinted through the telescope, but didn't get it quite right. 

"Right there." He helped her guide the lens gently over to the dragon constellation. She adjusted the zoom of the lens, and then saw the dragon. 

"This is cool," she said. "I've never had something like this to play with."

"I wanted to cheer you up," Galileo said. "You just seem so scared, and I don't know if I did something wrong or—"

"It has nothing to do with you." Her voice was gentle, tender, even, as she. Looked away from the telescope. "I told you that."

"Well, it's not just that." Galileo glanced away. "I think there's more to all of this than you're telling me."

Kira's palms grew sweaty, and her chest ached as her heart rate increased again. "What are you talking about?"

"I can't describe it, and I know it's not very scientific, but it's a gut feeling, an instinct," he said. "I know there's something more—"

"I can't tell you about it," Kira admitted. "I wish I could, just—-"

"Whenever you want me to know, I'm ready," Galileo said. "I'm here for you."

Kira smiled, but a part of her wondered if he really meant it. Would he run for the hills if he knew the truth?