“Can someone tell me what this is about?” I asked. I had Eddie and Micah on one side of me, Trey on the other.

“It’s this group that comes to school and gives presentations about things like drugs and safe sex,” explained Micah. He was pretty active in student government, so I wasn’t surprised he knew about today’s agenda.

“Those are kind of big topics,” I said. “Isn’t this just supposed to be an hour? Doesn’t seem like they can really provide thorough coverage of these issues.”

“I think it’s just supposed to be a quick overview,” said Trey. “Not like they’re trying to do a seminar or anything.”

“Well,” I declared. “They should.”

“Did we miss anything?” Julia and Kristin pushed their way through others and squeezed themselves in between Trey and me. Trey didn’t seem to mind.

“We’re trying to explain the point of this to Sydney,” Trey told them.

“I thought the point was to get out of class,” said Julia.

Kristin rolled her eyes. “This’ll show you what you were missing by being homeschooled, Sydney.”

Nothing could have prepared me for the spectacle that followed—mostly because never in my craziest dreams had I imagined weighty social issues would be addressed in musical numbers. The group performing for us called themselves Koolin’ Around, and the inappropriate use of that K was nearly enough to make me walk out then and there. Before each song, they’d give a quick and totally vague info-blurb about the topic or—even worse—a skit. These little lectures always began with, “Hey, kids!”

The first song was called “STDs Are Not for Me.” That was when I took out my math homework.

“Come on,” Eddie told me, laughing. “It’s not that bad. And people should know about this stuff.”

“Exactly,” I said, not looking up from my homework. “In trying to be ‘hip’ and ‘relatable,’ they’re trivializing issues that need to be taken more seriously.”

The only time I tuned in again was when Koolin’ Around had moved on to the evils of alcohol. One of the lyrics in their particularly atrocious song was, “Don’t listen to what your friends say / Bourbon will totally ruin your day.”

“Ugh. That’s it,” I muttered. I sought out Jill again. She was watching with kind of a stunned disbelief, but just like earlier, there was none of that despair or melancholy. Some gut instinct told me why she’d had the mood change. Adrian hadn’t snapped out of his gloom. Most likely he was drinking his way through it. Sometimes Jill would pick up some of the sillier side effects of intoxication—like the giggling I’d observed earlier—but eventually, alcohol actually numbed the spirit bond. The bright side of his indulgence was that it spared her some of his depression. The down side was that she could actually suffer the physical effects of a hangover later.

Koolin’ Around mercifully reached their last song, a big production number celebrating the joys of feeling good and living a healthy, happy lifestyle. They pulled up members of the student body to dance with them, earning a variety of reactions. Some students just stood there frozen and embarrassed, wearing expressions that said they were counting the seconds until this ended. Other students—particularly those who normally sought attention in class—made the biggest, most outlandish spectacle they could of themselves.