Friday, October 28th

38.)

I had been thinking about those stupid Megamaxes for six whole days. I couldn't wear Attends anymore, not with the way my bedwetting was progressing. They just weren't thick enough, and I leaked last night all over my sheets. My mom - an analogous parent, not my actual mom - told me that she had to take more serious precautions.

I had been arguing for weeks that I didn't need diapers. It was just stress! Or maybe my friend at school showed me a song on the bus ride home and I couldn't get it out of my head. A little lullaby, playing in the back of my mind... I couldn't seem to shake it. But my mom didn't want to hear my excuses; what she wanted was to not have to wash her twenty-year-old daughter's sheets every morning.

She pulled out one of those thick pink diapers, holding it up for me to see. My cheeks burned crimson. She couldn't be serious... I couldn't wear that! Already, the Attends were so humiliating, and they weren't that much thicker than a pad. But I didn't have a choice. As long as I was under her roof, I had to follow her rules.

Was that too tropey? It didn't really matter. People like tropes for a reason: they're sexy.

So when Blossom sent me a text Friday morning, I was a little crestfallen.

>>I cannot be there until nine tonight. Sorority meeting. 😭

I typed back.

>>Okay

>>See you at nine??

We wouldn't get to her beach house until eleven... she would probably be too tired to do anything. I fell back on my bed with a sigh.

Blossom replied in the affirmative, and she went to her sorority meeting that night without much incident. That is to say, she was yelled at for missing meetings, she was chided for shirking her responsibilities, and she was told how important it all was. All that stopped when she said she was missing appointments to go on dates with a girl though. If she'd said a boy they probably wouldn't have cut her any slack, but nobody in the sorority leadership wanted to be thought of as homophobic, so they bent over backwards to accommodate her.

At 8:55pm, she pulled up at Amanda's house to pick her up, freely unencumbered from the weight of her responsibilities.

At least until next week when she'd have to repeat them.

Nothing was perfect.

I had been baking most of the day. I made maple glazed donuts, at least a hundred of them. Only a dozen or so turned out good enough, in my opinion. Two batches I left in the oven for too long. One batch I forgot to add salt to the icing. They didn't even look like donuts, because I didn't have a donut pan. I had to use muffin pans instead.

I climbed in the passenger seat of Blossom's car with a plate of donuts in plastic wrap and a backpack of clothes. My fingers hurt a little and I still had smudges of batter on my face where I didn't wash enough. I felt exhausted.

Blossom didn't hide her excitement at all at the sight of the delicious looking baked treats; her sweet tooth was well-known. Besides the inherently deliciousness at play, she also found it super flattering that Amanda baked her things.

And.

She'd seen the way her new friend baked, and knew that there was no way she baked only one plate of them.

"And what do we have here? Cupcakes from my cupcake?"

"They're supposed to be donuts," I said, though I knew they didn't look like it. "I had to use a muffin tray, but they should still taste like donuts."

I didn't know where Blossom was prior to picking me up, just that she had been busy. She probably hadn't eaten. I unwrapped the plate as she pulled out of my driveway and passed her one of the muffin-shaped donuts.

"You aren't allergic to anything, are you? I should probably ask that before I make you food."

"I'm allergic to bees, but only when they bite me."

Blossom took a bite of the oddly-shaped donut and her eyes went wide.

"OhmyGOD these are AMAZING."

Her mouth was full and she was still chewing, so she spilled crumbs all over herself. A bib might have prevented that.

"Thanks," I laughed. "Those are my best ones, I think." I wrapped the plate back up and put it on the floor at my feet, just as I had with the cake. I wouldn't step on them; I was used to this kind of thing.

"So what kept you so late?" I asked as she pulled onto the freeway.

"Sorority meeting obligations." The sound of Blossom rolling her eyes was almost audible in her voice, even as she backed out and back onto the road. "It's a lot of stuff: some clerical business, money, but also potential ideas for new pledges, new rules, all that stuff. It's mondo boring, babes."

"So you do that every Friday?" I asked.

"We're supposed to. I don't always go."

"Like last week. Or the week before."

Blossom shrugged her shoulders and I leaned back in my seat. So she was choosing to come to the beach house with me over going to her meetings? I guess if I had to choose between diapers and sorority obligations, I'd choose diapers too. Though, if this were a story, those two things would fall together.

"I asked if I could video call if I'm busy, but Heather still pokes at her phone screen like a boomer and there's not a chance she could figure that out. Honestly, she's the epitome of young, dumb, and full of cum."

She laughed, and decided to address her double-booking.

"I'd rather chill with you anyway, cupcake."

That was the second time she called me that. I felt a swirl in my stomach that I couldn't quite label. It was either butterflies or indigestion.

"So, what are you thinking about Academy Works?" Blossom asked.

"Um... I think I know what I want to write. Do you mind if I isolate myself for a while this weekend?" I don't think I could write with her looking over my shoulder. Maybe if it was really quiet I could do it in the living room.

"As long as you're in one of your cute new diapers, and you emerge every now and then to let me know you're alright~" One of those requirements was a much softer request than the other.

"Uh... yeah..." I bit my lip and sunk into the passenger seat. "You know, I've been thinking about those all week..." I sure hoped she felt the same way, because I sure felt stupid saying it.

"Oh my god, me too! Like, I was rereading some stories - yours, and other peoples' - and just imaging like when they were writing it... did they know how thick diapers could get? Probably. I'm the one here without any real hands-on knowledge. But I'm so excited to change that with you."

"Yeah?" I couldn't help but smile. It was nice not being alone.

"Oh hey, so..." Blossom started, recalling something she had been wanting to ask. "I reread a lot of stuff, and I was wondering... Academy T seems out of place compared to the other three. Like, the ending doesn't leave much to the imagination."

"That's true." It seemed we were on the Academy Works conversation train. No complaints here. "It's more catalytic than main-plot. Like, uhh... have you ever read the Narnia books?"

"Not since I was like eight years old."

Younger Blossom was much more open to reading books for recreation than the current-day Blossom. Nowadays, unless it was smut, or an engineering book, she had no interest.

"So you know how The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe came out first? And a part of you wonders: okay, but why does this wardrobe take people to another world? So Lewis wrote The Magician's Nephew to explain that."

Blossom nodded her head. I wasn't sure if she was just listening or if she understood what I was saying.

"Well, the other books, like Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, are just sequels. But the third book, or, uh... chronologically the third book - The Horse and His Boy - doesn't really have much of a purpose. It doesn't even take place in Narnia."

"So what's the point of that book then, Miss Author?"

There was a cute level of enthusiasm in Blossom's voice; like even if she didn't completely understand, she was at least interested in learning.

"Well, I think it gives the reader some extra information. Like, what is Calormen like? Why are they the villains in The Last Battle? In The Horse and His Boy, the main character escapes from Calormen and warns Archenland of an impending attack. Because of him, they stop the Calormenes from invading. As readers, we don't need to know all that, but it gives a lot of context for the final book."

"So Academy T is to Academy Works as The Horse and His Boy is to the Narnia books?" Blossom asked.

"I like to think so," I said. "Talita isn't really that important, but she's the reason things start going wrong. Do we need her story to understand the plot? Not really. But it's nice to see the Academy make a mistake. It raises the stakes, doesn't it? Knowing they are fallible? Knowing that the end isn't pre-determined?"

"It really does! It's like how A Series of Unfortunate Events initially paints Count Olaf as being evil and infallible because nobody will listen to the kids, right? But as the books go on, the formula breaks down, more and more of his henchfolk leave, and you realize by the end that without the negligence of others letting him get away with it, Count Olaf is really nothing."

Blossom nodded, proud of herself for having a literary reference of her own she could make.

"Yeah, exactly! But rather than waiting ten books, I decided to do it after two. Plus, like... I really wanted to write the Town as a setting. It's a really fun place to imagine, and who doesn't want to read about a town of adult babies?"

"I'd love to live there," Blossom said. "I don't know if I'd be a Candy or a Mommy, but both sound pretty appealing. And the whole atmosphere of the place is like that whole 'the dystopia and utopia are two sides of the same coin' trope, and I love that. It's Stepford Babies!"

"Right? I wish I made the Kindergarten more engaging, like the Town. I was going for a fantastical Lord of the Flies, kids build society kind of thing. But I forgot a big part of wanting to be a baby is having someone take care of you."

"At the same time I think a lot of people think the only dynamic is Little and Big and the idea of a hierarchical society entirely composed of Littles shows that there's all these other dynamics too. And I think that's good for relationship representation. Like, you're a Little. As with other sexy stuff, I'm a Switch, so I could be Little too. The idea that we could have fun in that context is pretty cool!"

"That's a good point..." The Matrons were pretty hands-off; the Kindergarten had a very Little/Little dynamic. I never thought about playing baby with Blossom in that way, but Academy K would be a pretty good template.

"So what Nation are you in?" Blossom asked. "I'm gonna guess... Limes? Or Bananas!"

"Well, it doesn't really matter," I said. "They don't mean anything. It's just made up."

Blossom stopped for a moment and pursed her lips, processing this revelation. She tilted her head in a minor amount of confusion.

"What do you mean it's all made up? It's not, it's like the houses in Harry Potter; you even straight up reference the Queen Bitch of TERF Island!"

Blossom paused again, considering that she was arguing with the literal author here.

"It's like the Robbers Cave experiment; you put a few dozen kids in a valley with four playscapes and they'll start picking sides. They'll make up names, like Blueberries and Limes. They'll make up characteristics, like 'the most baby'. And they'll fight for imaginary resources, like 'points'. All the Matrons really did was encourage it."

But Blossom was still looking incredulous.

"Well... well even if that is true! If you were there, the fact it's made up wouldn't matter, would it? You'd still want to be a part of one of them more than the others, right? I'm probably a Cherry myself."

I sighed and decided to answer her question.

"I'd probably pick Limes or Blueberries. I look better in cool colors."

"You're definitely a Blueberry. I wonder if there should be a fanfiction about a Cherry Girl who dates a Blueberry Girl and there's an international scandal or something~" Blossom turned her head and winked and then focused back on the road.

The thought of someone writing fanfic about Academy Works... I looked down at my hands and smiled. There's no higher compliment to a writer than fanfiction.

"So it's all... just made up?" Blossom asked for clarification. "The Matrons didn't do that?"

"Not really. They gave them the 'High Priestess' thing and the points thing, but that was just to create artificial scarcity. The rest was just socialization." To be honest, I was kind of proud of myself for that! I did a lot of psychology research to make sure it sounded realistic.

"Amy, babes, cupcake, that is awesome. You realize how brilliant you are? You could read the entire story and never figure that out, but knowing it also makes the story so much cooler. And it opens up so many new questions on the basics of like... what the Academy is up to."

"I'm glad you think so." I wasn't used to praise, but it always seemed so genuine coming from Blossom. I knew how mean she could be - she had been in the past - and she wasn't one to beat around the bush. If she was upset or angry or just didn't like something, she'd probably just say it.

Conversation started to lag a little bit after that. It was late, and both of us were exhausted. By the time we pulled into the driveway of the beach house, half the muffin-donuts were gone and I was haggard. I wondered if I'd actually be able to sleep tonight.