The dining hall was a whole different place.  

  The tables and benches had been shoved to the walls to make seats and to clear the middle of the room.  On the ceiling, the chandelier that usually flashed colors to cue classes starting was now casting bright neon and blacklight all over the vast space.  Four small disco balls hung, one in each corner.  Fairy lights outlined the edges of the walls.  In the corner farthest from the door, a couple of nerdy looking kids had set up two huge speakers, and they appeared to be choosing a song from a laptop glowing on a table next to the speakers.  

  Leen looked unimpressed by the skating rink-style party, but Einar looked just as surprised as Juniper felt.  

  "Do they do this every year?" She asked Leen.

  "Yeah," she sounded bored.  "Sometimes they give it a theme.  My sister said for her first year they pulled out roller skates and let everyone have a skating rink instead of a dining hall."

  Einar stared at the speakers across the floor.  "Those things must be super loud," He murmured, as if to himself.  "Look at the size of them!  They must be taller than Leen..."  Einar glanced sideways at her.  "but that's not hard to do."   

  She gave him a death glare.  "Hardy-Har-har, Peanut Gallery."  

  Some other kids were walking around.  A few were at the buffet line checking out the sweets; two were at the nerdy table. 

  "Hey!"  Juniper had a thought.  " Think we can request songs?"

  Leen nodded.  "There's always loud music, and always crummy music cause kids can make requests. I'd bet you a funnel cake that's what those punks over there are doing."

  Juniper stared at her friend.  "You good?"  She asked gently.  "You seem mad."

  Einar snorted.  "Mad?  Only always."

  "Shut up nerd."  Leen was definitely upset about something.  She scowled at everything, and didn't examine the food table too closely, which was what really got Juniper's attention.  The girl had the biggest appetite of anyone she knew.

  "All right then."  Juniper decided to let her grouch.  "Come on nerd, lets pick a song."

  "Would you stop calling me nerd!"  But Einar followed her to the table anyway.  "I'm not even wearing glasses today,"  He grumbled.

  At the table, a pair of preppy girls and an emo-looking girl were arguing over whether they should ask for Over My Head or Wildest Dreams.  

  "Hey,"  Einar greeted the nerds.  One had black hair and glasses resting on his beaky nose, and had a Ride the Lighting t-shirt.  The other was chubby, with hot-pink dyed hair and lots of piercings.  Her eyeliner had huge wings that seemed like overkill to Juniper, who never wore makeup.

  "Oh, hiya," The chubby girl answered.  "Got a song to request?"

  "If that's allowed,"  Juniper confirmed, "then yeah.  We were just checking."

  "We can take requests,"  The Ride the Lightning guy said, "But we won't start the music for another--"  He checked his watch "--ten or fifteen minutes.  After that, all the kids will be clamoring for their song to be played."

  "That's cool,"  Einar assured him.  "You got Crazy Train?"

  "Crazy Train?  Aw hell yeah!"  Dude DJ gave him a high-five.  "I'll play that one first."

  Einar slapped his palm enthusiastically.  "Yah mon, you're cool."

  Dude DJ looked to Juniper.  "Got a song you want?" He asked through a grin.

  She thought for a moment.  "Scars to Your Beautiful?" She suggested.

  Pink Hair nodded, agreeing with that choice.  "That'll be the second to play," Dude DJ told her.

  She and Einar thanked the nerds and looked around for Leen.  She was filling up a paper plate at the buffet table; lots of meat and chocolate, it looked like.  Weirdo, who eats meat and chocolate on the same plate?  Leen, apparently.  

  "Oi!"  Einar called to her.  "Bone apple teeth, ey?  That's some collection of fine cuisine you got there."

  She gave a Look of Death.  "SHut, nerd."

  He tossed his hands up in the air.  "Lady, I'm not even- wait is that a karaoke thing?"

  Across the room from the door, in the opposite corner from the big speakers, was a small stage set up from about ten or fifteen tables of the non-folding variety pushed together to make a platform.  The outer edge was made up of picnic tables, so there was a step up onto the stage.  Or seating, if you were okay with being in kicking range of a jamming out metal fan.  Standing in the center of the makeshift stage was a microphone stand, a wire trailing down and back to a large sound bar.  Another kid whose face was lit blue by a computer screen typed furiously.  Juniper wondered if he was doing something related to karaoke or just messing around online.  Maybe he was texting someone. 

  " 'Scuse me, fella," Einar called conversationally, "This wouldn't happen to be a setup for karaokeing, would it?"

  "Aye, that it is."  for some reason the other guy had silently agreed to talk like they were in the 1800's or something.  "Why, you got a song to sing?  A melody to... melodize?"  

  "Perhaps..." Einar said mysteriously.  "Or perhaps my friends here like to vocalize in harmony."

  "That so?"  he peered over his laptop, the blue of the screen casting shadows across his face, lighting his features so it was difficult to tell exactly how they were actually shaped.  A hoodie with the hood pulled up added to the effect, like some sort of grim karaoke master.

  Einar nodded.  "At what time this evening does the karaoke begin?"

  The grim karaoke master checked the time inn his laptop.  "A fair stretch of time after the other music starts, so other singers will be--" He seems to check himself, like he almost said something that would be kinda funny, kinda not. "--um, loosened up from sugar consumption."

  Leen bit into a chocolate bar with a loud crunch.  It seemed a rather pointed gesture.

                                                                           🍫

  Later, about two hours after the official start of the party thing...

  Some of Einar's guy friends took him off to find something they wanted to do.  Juniper didn't mind; Leen was only getting surlier and surlier, and didn't need to aim all of that at their only other good friend.  However, she did spot him in a corner with two other guys, drinking from a flask.  Oh no...  was Einar drinking drinking, or was that just something a friend had brought that definitely wasn't alcoholic? 

  "Be right back," she told Leen.  

  She looked up from her bowl of ramen.  "Mm, where you going?"

  "Gonna find our nerd before he gets in trouble."  The fear and nerves clearly had shown through her voice, because Leen stood.

  "What's he doing?"  Her voice had lost its deadness and picked up a quiet charged energy.  "Where is he?"  

  "Hey, you don't need to come,"  Juniper stood in her way so she wouldn't see Einar and lose her head.  "All this... whatever it is with you tonight, we don't need that.  So eat your noodles and chill!"  She realized her voice sounded pretty harsh, but Leen could be stubborn as all-get-out.

  "Okay, but--"  Her protests were drowned by a voice from the loudspeakers. 

  "Oi-oi-oi, guess what kids?!"  The voice was that of the Dude DJ who had played Einar's song and it was loud.  "Its time... for karaoke!!"  A loud noise answered him from the kids, varying from 'yay' sounds to 'aw come on' sounds.  About half the population of the room moved to clamor for the karaoke master to acknowledge them, while the other half stood at a distance to watch.  The first one to get admitted on stage was a wiry little boy with dark hair who spoke a little funny.  He requested a Michael Jackson song and did all the dance moves that accompanied it.

  Meanwhile Juniper was shoving her way through the masses of people toward the corner she had last seen Einar in.  She used her elbows and shoulders to push them out of the way, earning several exclamations of surprise, anger, and many 'hey watch it!'s.  By the time she reached the spot, the thin kid had finished his Michael Jackson song and the karaoke master was searching for another singer/dancer.  But she barely noticed this because the corner was empty of Einar and his two friends.  

  "Yup, come on up Ozzie Osbourne!  Are you gonna do Crazy Train for us?"  The voice of the Karaoke master reached her ears.  what? Ozzy Osbourne...?   Crazy Train... Einar!   Her head whipped around.  Suer enough, climbing the bench-steps to the stage, was the dark-haired figure of her wayward nerd.   He wobbled on his feet and nearly tripped over the edge of the stage.  Oh NO!  He definitely didn't look sober.  

  Einar giggled when the karaoke master asked him what song he wanted.  He gave him a sideways look that suggested he noticed how tipsy he was acting and wasn't sure what to do.

  "What about Everglow?  Starset?  Aye?  Yeah, do that one."  He giggled again.  

  Juniper wasn't sure what to do any more than the karaoke master.  She could let him go through with this, and let him make a fool of himself so hopefully he would learn something from it;  or she could jump up there and stop him.  If she tried to stop him, both of them could be made fools, or he could think some drunken thing like he was being arrested and try to escape, then fall off the stage and crack his head open on the hard wood floors.  But not stopping him might end with him actually being in trouble for drinking or whatever it was he was doing and she didn't want him in trouble... or did she?  He could just get humiliated.

  The start of Everglow began to thrum from the speakers.  Leen appeared by Juniper's side.  "What is he doing?!"  She yelled.  "He is always too chicken to sing in front of people.  Why now?  What's wrong with him?  Is this what you meant by trouble?" 

  Juniper was busy watching Einar and didn't respond.  He swayed unsteadily until the first verse, then he leaned all his weight on the mic stand.  "You come in... Waves... Til you're all I know.  Then you fade a...way"

  A hush settled over the assembled kids.  His singing voice--which Juniper and Leen, his best friends, had never heard-- was amazing.  It swooped and danced through the air, painting out the colors of the song so the crowd could almost see it.  Einar clearly got lost in the song-- he swayed on his feet, his eyes closed, one hand gesturing and floating with the melody.  "Everglow...!  You'll never know the beauty I see when you open your shadows.  Everglow...!  They'll never know the worlds that I see in the darkness you don't show..."

  His eyes opened, locking onto Leen and Juniper.  One of his eyelids blinked down; Juniper couldn't tell if it was a wink or muscle spasm.  

  As the song continued, the drunken unsteadiness seemed to drain out of him.  He stood straighter, but still relaxed.  His eyes closed again, swaying side to side with the music, one hand floating up and down with pitch like a conductor's directions.  The voice that came out of Einar didn't match his regular voice;  it flowed around, painting a picture with color and emotion that Juniper could feel resonating within her bones.  

  The overhead fairy lights dimmed and brightened as the melody swelled and dropped.  The shadows on all walls flickered and danced.  Behind Einar, his shadow lengthened and seemed to grow wings, spreading out, flexing.  Great, feathery wings that reached almost wall-to-wall and that began to look less like a trick of the light and more of a real shadow, cast from a wingless person.