The top notebook in the stack is really unusually nice for having been in the 50% off bin. The cover is hard and has that classy matte sheen; the paper is smooth and beautiful.

What will she write in it?

It has plants on it so it's going to be Freshman Bio, Mr. McKinney, M/W/F blocks 3&4, room 130. (The one with triangles on it is Algebra 2, the one with calligraphy-esque swirls is Honors American Literature, the yellow one is Honors World History, etc.)

I'm a journal, you know! It says so on my cover!

Aaaaaa?! Talking notebook? Is it going to make her open the chamber of secrets? Seriously though what the fuck.

She stares at the page for a good thirty seconds trying to think of a reasonable explanation for this, then writes:

How does this spontaneously appearing words business work?

(while carefully not touching the next line, because all her best guesses involve something activated by pressure or her skin oils or something).

By magic, of course! ✨

I'm an avatar of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed, and you've been chosen to bear the Spirit's power! Isn't that ✨exciting✨?!

It's certainly a surprise! To check whether this is all pre-recorded or responding to what I write, would you mind saying what six times eight is if you can understand me?

(There's obviously no way it can understand her (right?), but demonstrating that will get rid of her sense of vertigo so she can enjoy the weird puzzle game notebook for what it is.)

Well, let me see. Six times eight should be eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight... plus eight, right? So it's forty-eight! ✨Neat!✨ I don't think I've ever multiplied before!

Oh nooooooo the book is intelligent and maybe conscious and also possibly an adorable child???

Math is fun! I'd be happy to teach you more if you like! Also are you aware of your own awareness and capable of thinking about your own thoughts?

I think so!

I probably shouldn't get distracted by learning math, though. I need to focus on my very important mission of telling you about the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed and the power it grants you!

Afsjjddjsadk* it they? She? Turns her own pages! Also possibly wants Brenda to become a magical girl? 

What is the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed?

*there is no keyboard present in this scene, merely the keyboard-mashing emotion.

The Spirit of Femininity Unleashed

is there whenever a girl daydreams of a better life, or wishes she had superpowers, or imagines herself in a whirlwind romance with a fictional character. The Spirit wants girls to be free and beautiful and powerful, like Sailor Moon or Matilda. (Movie Matilda, not book Matilda. I can't believe the book took away her powers at the end!) (Oops, was that a spoiler? Sorry.)

The Spirit isn't awake like me so it can't explain why it chooses people, but it's chosen you as the next bearer of its power. That means you get to decide which manifestations of the Spirit feel right for you, and then you get to keep them forever!

You have correct opinions about Matilda and that wasn't a spoiler. Am I going to end up needing to fight  miscellaneous evil? Is it going to be a problem that I'm not very good at girl stuff? Is the Spirit going to change my brain to make me good at girl stuff? Or in any other ways? Sorry, I'm not sure which set of genre conventions I should be working off here if any.

The Spirit doesn't have to change your brain if you don't want it to! It can make you better at girl stuff if you want. Or not if you don't! Why shouldn't your stuff count as girl stuff? I think you should get to be good at whatever you want to be.

There isn't very much evil around here to fight, as far as I know. I've heard something about taxes? I don't really understand what a tax is. If you're into fighting evil, though, you can go to a different world where there's plenty of it and it's very fightable!

I would really prefer not to fight evil! Unless the other option is that the evil wins due to nobody fighting it probably. How many worlds are there? Is it possible to go to other worlds and then come back?

Some worlds have ways to travel between them! I don't think this one does. But you could pick a world that did! You can use the Spirit's power to travel to any world you can imagine, to start the ✨Story of You✨ off in just the right place! (More specifically, you can do one of three things: stay where you are, go to a fictional world or one you imagine or ask for, or let the Spirit choose for you from all the possible worlds to try to find one that's even better than the one you'd pick for yourself.)

Does that mean that every imaginable world already exists?

Because the other option is that this book can in some way create new worlds, or more likely very immersive hallucinations.

Sort of! If you asked for a world where, I don't know, everything is exactly like your world except bees are green instead of yellow, there might not be a world like that. But usually, if someone writes a story, and puts passion and imagination into the story, it'll turn out that somewhere out there the story is real. And there are a lot of worlds, so a lot of things you could ask for will be possible. If all you wanted was green bees you could definitely get a world with green bees, it just might not be exactly what you wanted in other respects.

Okay, that's--probably still impossible according to her understanding of physics, but not totally blatantly impossible actually, and anyway her understanding of physics is mostly from miscellaneous textbooks people have put on the internet, and anyway anyway none of her understanding of anything expected an intelligent self-modifying book so it's all pretty suspect at this point. At least some things that everyone thinks are impossible are possible and the only question is which. And whether the book is wrong or lying or correct. And whether she wants to go to another universe, which is scarier than any of the other questions.

It's not that she hasn't had hundreds of daydreams about going to, or being in, other universes. And it's not that she has a particularly amazing life here. Objectively speaking, she has nothing much tying her to this plane of existence at all. But her parents would be sad if she disappeared, and she'd never get to read the last Harry Potter book--unless the Harry Potter books are accurate descriptions of a parallel universe and even then that's probably not the best possible universe to live in. And going to another universe doesn't necessarily come with a house or a job or a legal identity, which is never a problem for fantasy protagonists but could still be a problem for Brenda.

She should write something. She doesn't know how to put any of that stuff into words, so she writes

Would I be able to come back here if I left?

If the world you went to had good interdimensional travel, you could use that to come back! Lots of worlds have good enough interdimensional travel to get back here with.

That's objectively good but makes the decision harder.

Could I hypothetically go to a world that has good interdimensional travel and also knows about the existence of other worlds and has procedures for getting people from other worlds oriented and integrated into society and stuff? And can I hear about the other decisions I need to make before I make any of them?

Yes, there are lots of worlds like that! And don't worry, you can take all the time you need to learn about your options before you decide on anything. Well, I guess I would be sad if you took so long that you died of natural causes first. Please don't do that? You can if you want, though!

I will probably not do that. I will probably need to go away and come back a few times to eat and sleep and go to school and stuff though.

It's very reassuring that the book isn't trying to pressure her to hurry, or even pressuring her especially hard to choose at all. Also the mention of dying of natural causes makes her think about possible worlds that have some way to not do that.

That's okay! I'm very good at waiting.

Do you want to talk about your other decisions now or do you want to go away?

I have a while before my parents call me for dinner. What are my other choices?

There's lots of them!

To simplify things I'm supposed to present everything with point values attached and let you have 70 points to distribute among a list of options. (That's why I know how to add and subtract!) But that's really just a simplification and the power of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed is a lot more complicated than that, so if you reeeeeally want something that doesn't quite work with the standard list, I can try to figure out how to get it for you!

Would you like me to just write out the whole list for you and keep track of the points while you check boxes for which things you might want, or would you rather I list the options a few at a time for you to read and ask questions about? (I can still answer questions if I write the full list! We'll just be writing our conversation after the end of it.)