( This is where it gets sad. )

It was weird to see Nico's palace of a summer home all dusty and abandoned, and to be able to walk around with her sneakers on without being scolded by Mr. and Mrs. Minoru. Gert couldn't say for sure, being a teenager and all, but she was pretty sure this feeling was not unlike seeing old pictures of oneself from twenty years ago ( Read more... )

After about nine hundred delays that had had Gert anxiously tapping her foot for so long that she was starting to develop blisters, the portal finally dropped off Gert, Bay and Old Lace at the top of the stairs at the new and improved hideout under the La Brea tar pits, where a cacophony of arguing voices awaited them ( Read more... )

Gert was in a pretty great mood today: after over a year of her bargaining and pleading, Portalocity had finally agreed to let her take a trip to Los Angeles, apparently convinced at last that she wasn't a terrorist or exiled from her own dimension or anything like that. Gert suspected that Bay might have had something to do with that, but it was ( Read more... )

"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... )