SPOILERS: This chapter and further chapters contain spoilers for Academy A - Chapter 15.

124.)

When I climbed back into Blossom's car, my cheeks were red from the cold and it was dark outside. I knew which car was hers because the headlights were on. I kicked the snow off my shoes on the side of her car and climbed in, shivering in the wake of the car's radiant heat.

"How was therapy?" Blossom asked. She still had Amy's laptop in her lap, still open, still on. Blossom had read through the chapter a few times, so it still hadn't gone to sleep.

"Okay, I think..." I buckled my seatbelt and put my hands up against the vents in front of me. Blossom turned up the fan. "I have a new homework assignment."

"More panic attacks?" Blossom asked, sounding half sarcastic and half skeptical.

"No, just a movie to watch." And then I remembered what Blossom was doing while I was in therapy. I turned to her with bright eyes and asked the leading question:

"So?"

While Amy had been in therapy, Blossom had been busy madly writing notes in a notebook in several different colors of pen, which was the way Blossom Brixley did all her notes. At the top she titled it: The Brixley Report: Pt. 2 and everything below it was presented in alternating colors, in point form, about the chapter she read. She first handed Amy her laptop back, then the notepad with her notes.

* I absolutely understand where Aya is coming from about being the best at school because I take grades super seriously, and a C is never good enough for me. I don't judge others who are happy with a C but I NEED that A!

"Yeah, that sounds like you," I said, reading through to the next point.

* Do you think there's a market for silence pacis? And like, in stories, when they glue the pacifier in; is that a thing? I kind of wanna try it but cannot imagine what it would do to my skin.

"I'm not sure about the pacifier gluing thing," I admitted. "It seems kind of scary? Or like it might not even work... but Silence Pacifiers were one of my best ideas, I think."

"I absolutely agree," Blossom nodded as she put her car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, turning the heat up one notch to counter the cold air that had come in with Amy. "And like, they could be good for anxiety, too. Like Oh, Amy can't talk right now; she's got her silence binkie in."

"If only the real world would accept that answer," I sighed wistfully.

* Final day of semester is super super bittersweet for real-life stuff, I can't even imagine how it feels for them.

Probably about the same, but more intense.

* Besides, don't they just repeat the same stuff over and over? It's like if Nietzsche wrote about Sisyphus. All that existential feeling and they don't even get pink pudding for breakfast? Criminal.

Yeah, the Academy never really commented on what happened in summertime. Probably another semester. Thankfully I wouldn't ever have to decide.

* Here it says "there weren't any classes" and then down here you say "there wasn't any pink pudding at breakfast so the students were focused in class" and I think that might be a mistake?

"Huh?"

I took my laptop from the space between Blossom and me and skimmed through the chapter. It took me a minute to find what Blossom was talking about.

"Oh, I meant like... there wasn't pink pudding at breakfast ever, even on a normal day. But I should probably clarify that..." I added a few extra words to one of the lines.

"Oh! That makes sense. You were probably clear enough, honestly, but if I get tripped up on it I bet other people could, too."

* This rivalry she has with Emily? I used to be kind of like that in middle school, only the people I assigned as my rivals were never people I could tell that to, so I kept it to myself. And then in high school... well, I was not nice to those people, very regrettably. Aya is probably more emotionally healthy than I was then, huh?

"Oof, well I wouldn't go that far..." Aya had her own mental health issues, probably on the opposite side of the spectrum from Blossom Brixley. Maybe it was one of those "grass is always greener" kind of things; from far away, everyone looks closer to the goal than you are, when in reality they are just as far away on the other side.

"I never really had rivals in school," I said. "I think I was my own rival. But I took a lot of inspiration from anime. Protagonists always have rivals in anime."

"Who is Wendy's rival then?" Blossom asked.

"Herself, definitely," I laughed.

* How can the ceremony be tradition if it's only happened one other time? Well, my babydoll, I call bullshit. I think this has been happening a LONG ass time. I think this has been going on forever, like some ancient secret society of baby-makers. Also: Lyra is a pretty name, I dunno if I said that before

* Sorry that one was long

* I got carried away

"You think the Academies have been around for a while?" I said, tilting my head with a smile. If so, what did it mean that this one was Academy A? Was it the first?

"I think they've been around forever, like a secret society thing." Blossom nodded, certain of herself.

"Interesting," I said like Stephanie did, then went back to the list.

* I'd flourish in any of the Academies; they'd probably ask me to come run the place honestly

I doubted it. Blossom only liked to do what others told her to do when she wanted to do it anyway. The Academy would be fun for all of a week.

* Hey now, Lyra, be nice to Wendy; hunting ghosts and rumors all night is important.

In this case, it was.

* This whole auditorium and stage setup reminds me a lot of that part of Audrey and Staycee where they have to make their confessions and poop their diapers on stage in front of the others; was that an inspiration for you?

"I never finished that story," I shrugged. It was too long and too slow. Sometimes I wished those authors would tighten up their work a little. Then again, I was hypercritical of just about any writer. Then, any time I found myself impressed, I always got jealous. There was a reason I didn't read a lot of diaper smut anymore.

"It was a good scene," Blossom said, fanning herself.

* Podium woman = hottie

"Not wrong." The woman - Justice Byers - who went up to the podium in the auditorium had the kind of confidence and kindness any Little would envy in a caregiver. She was a powerful force.

* Are they conditioned to be attracted to her? Aya is so so so into her.

"Or Aya's just a total bottom and gets that dominant vibe from her." Though conditioned to be attracted to Justice Byers wasn't too far off. I couldn't tell Blossom that.

* The Us and Them commentary is really interesting, and when you separate Candies from People? Wow. That's just. So. Attractive. I wanna be a Candy 😦

She actually drew a little pouty face in pen. It looked a lot like an emoji.

"That's from Academy I," I said, like she didn't remember. "I figured I hadn't used it in a while, and it's an important theme. It was time to bring it back."

"I loved it then, and I love it now. I think I might have a dehumanization kink? Maybe? I like a lot of that doll stuff I see on Twitter too. Probably explains a lot about me."

"Sure does." Like if she was into everyone thinking she was just a sex object, she was doing a great job. Though that stereotype was at a high school level.

* Sixty students. I think I knew that's how many there were? But it's still a bit of a shock because I expect the school to be a lot bigger than that.

"We talked before about how each Academy has about sixty students. You can kind of infer that from other stories, but I think I spelled it out a little more clearly because we talked about it actually..." The longer Academy Works went on, the more I realized I had to start making ideas less ambiguous. If I wanted to wrap everything up neatly, things needed more explanation.

"Mhm it seemed like a familiar number. Like in Academy I it feels like it's too many and here it feels like it's too few, but the fact it's consistent is suspicious to the max."

"Sure is."

* Huh. Did the school building exist before the Academy?

"It would make sense, since the building is a lot bigger than necessary. Seems a waste of resources." Then again, the Academy was all about wasting resources.

* I wonder what sixty students messing themselves in a single room would be like…

I didn't even want to think about it.

* OH SHIT! Go Aya!! Yeah! You get it! You deserve it!!

The chapter ended with Aya getting called to the stage. She was the best student for the semester. It was everything she had wanted.

Then there was a final comment at the bottom of the page, after a line break.

* Third time reading through, I noticed... you say "you". Is that a typo?

It was the second to last line of the chapter. Out of spoken word, it read: "And if you can remember..." Never before in Academy Works had the narration spoken directly to someone.

"It's not a typo," I said slyly.

"Oh, that means something! You gotta tell me babes, cupcake, sweetheart, babygiiiirrl, you gotta tell me what that means!"

"It means what it means," I smiled.

"C'mon! Is it talking to someone specifically? Wait, who is writing this? Is it an in-canon story?"

"Okay..." Maybe I could give something, because she was way off track. "It's just a writing technique. Why would the narrator address the reader?"

"Uh..." Blossom thought about it for a moment. "Because we're a part of the story?"

"Which means..."

"Which means it's real life?"

"Yep," I said brightly. "It connects the reader to the world in the story, because they share the same world. It's the same reason Kione mentions Holes and Harry Potter."

"So that obviously means the Academies are real and I can be a Candy~"

Blossom did a little first pump before putting her hand back on the wheel and laughing.

"You're an amazing writer, Amy. You know that, don't you?"

"I try," I said with a half smile and a blush. I closed Blossom's notebook, and when she parked the car in front of the beach house, I gave it back to her. I loved reading her thoughts, and this chapter in particular got a lot of them. I wondered how many comments I'd get on the next chapter. It would, after all, conclude Academy A. I still had a lot to say.