"I know that your bureaucratic worldview can barely accept the notion of extenuating circumstances, but I'm telling you that's what I have," Gert snapped, switching her phone to her other ear. "The idea of a no-portal list is stupid, first of all, especially when I'm already outside of my home, and secondly, I'm almost seventeen, which is legally ( Read more... )

The weather outside was offending Gert's delicate Los Angeles sensibilities, so as soon as she was back from her field trip, she retreated to her room and returned to her bed, swiftly shimmying under the covers ( Read more... )

Gert hadn't been feeling super cheerful the past few days. Even though she was pretty firmly agnostic, and even though she thought Thanksgiving was a stupid, unjust holiday that celebrated horrible crimes and had no business being marketed as some kind of celebration of friendship, the looming approach of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving on her iCal was ( Read more... )

Gert wasn't big on Halloween -- hadn't been, really, since she was about nine. Now that she was sixteen, she was pretty over the whole thing, and in the interim she had all but memorized an annoying spiel about how this dumb holiday was just another sign of the appropriation and Americanization of everything anywaySo. No trick-or-treating for her ( Read more... )

Gert woke up early and did not want to get out of bed ( Read more... )

The cool thing about having her own room was that Gert didn't even really need to pretend that she had a reason to leave in the middle of the day, and she could happily hibernate in the air-conditioned dormitory as long as she pleased. That was especially useful on a weekend like this, where having any more knowledge of the outside world than ( Read more... )

Gert's one and only saving grace was that she didn't have a roommate this semester, because she woke up with a song in her head and it only took minutes for that song to reach her lips, too.

Well, there was Old Lace. But she could sleep through this, probably.

"No more waking up to innocence, say hello to hesitance to everyone I meet, thanks to ( Read more... )

Over the course of the weirdly social past few weeks, Gert and Old Lace hadn't had a lot of quality time to spend together. So that was why on this fine Sunday morning, Gert was flopped on the floor on her stomach in her pajamas, painting Old Lace's nails ( Read more... )

Gert had heard a lot about her future lately, and the more she heard about it, however much each new tidbit seemed to contradict the old, the less excited she was to get there.

Victor's warning a few weeks ago had been one thing: as much as it obviously sucked, she could at least envision how that version of herself had gotten there and try to ( Read more... )

Gert stared at the bottle of Purple Haze hair dye in her hands.

It was labeled Purple Haze. The dye looked purple. She had smeared it on her hair and left it in overnight just like she did every single week. And yet her hair was now blonde.

Obviously, she was going to put purple over this immediately, because this just looked weird on her. But ( Read more... )