100 Sideways Miles: Part 1: My Neighbor Julia - The Governor of California

by Andrew Smith
Nothing ever seems to go in the direction Finn Easton wants, but with the help of his best friend and new girlfriend, he might finally be able to escape the shadow of his father's bestselling novel.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part 1: The Quit Mission-The Politics of Teenage Grudges, Part 1: My Neighbor Julia-The Governor of California, Part 2: Unlucky Lindy-I Need an Extra Bag, Part 2: The Boy in the Book-Going Home, Part 3

Here are links to our lists for works by Andrew Smith: 100 Sideways Miles, Winger
35 words 16 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sluggish
    moving slowly
    I had to wait until the words sluggishly came back, till I could smell the ammonia stink of the urine puddled around me on the floor, feel the stinging burn in my crotch, staring and staring out the door until all things reclaimed their names and I knew where I was.
  2. reclaim
    reassert one's right or title to
    I had to wait until the words sluggishly came back, till I could smell the ammonia stink of the urine puddled around me on the floor, feel the stinging burn in my crotch, staring and staring out the door until all things reclaimed their names and I knew where I was.
  3. dejected
    affected or marked by low spirits
    Laika curled up, dejected, and shivered away from me to a corner of the living room, watching, watching.
  4. hurtle
    move with or as if with a rushing sound
    I generally considered how nice it would be if I could simply stop myself from hurtling through space so fast, if only for a few seconds at a time.
  5. contemplate
    consider as a possibility
    I am not afraid to contemplate such things, but I am afraid of what suicide would do to my dad, to Cade, or Mom and Nadia.
  6. trudge
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud
    And the moon, dragged along, trudges around us at a little more than half a mile per second.
  7. linger
    remain present although waning or gradually dying
    I do not believe in ghosts, unless they are just lingering atoms from the dead; atoms that didn’t know how to let go of one another.
  8. causal
    involving an entity that produces an effect
    Like sexual confusion and atom bombs, self-taught civil engineers are causally associated with extinction.
  9. pummel
    strike, usually with the fist
    Our homes were built along the same channel where countless corpses were dragged and pummeled by William Mulholland’s self-taught mistake.
  10. fetid
    offensively malodorous
    The moon was full and bright enough that I found the mangled coyote between clumps of wild blooming buckwheat, where some other creature had likely dragged it. Its side had been laid wide open, and in the white-hot light from the moon, I could see bones and the fetid yellow coils of rotting innards.
  11. contrition
    sorrow for sin arising from fear of damnation
    She curled her tail between her legs, grinned with toothy contrition, and presented her belly at my feet.
  12. impassable
    incapable of being gone across or through
    In winter, when the flooding came, residents there would have to drive through the creek, which became impassable during heavy rainfall.
  13. devise
    come up with after a mental effort
    Her skin was dark and smooth, and she had the most perfectly curved slender legs. I tried to devise some strategy that might allow me to casually touch them, just like Julia had touched my arm.
  14. brooding
    deeply or seriously thoughtful
    Cade was athletic, smart, energetic, and high maintenance; Monica was quiet, brooding, and dissatisfied.
  15. predatory
    living by preying on other animals
    And anyone who’d read my father’s novel would know right away that the scars on my back were exactly the same marks carried by the predatory incomers.
  16. morbid
    suggesting the horror of death and decay
    “You’re probably right. You can’t just name a dog Laika and then expect her to not be morbidly fascinated by decay. The name carries an awful lot of baggage.”
  17. inane
    devoid of intelligence
    Most of the party took place outside, in Blake’s parents’ backyard, where scores of boys from Burnt Mill Creek gathered around gleaming kegs of beer, whooping and hollering over the dumbest and most inane masculine challenges...
  18. glare
    look at with a fixed or angry gaze
    I realized too that Blake Grunwald had just come inside the house from his parents' backyard and stood glaring at me with his flabby chest puffed out and his arms bent back like a gunslinger in an old Western.
  19. rekindle
    arouse again
    This was definitely not a good time or place for me and Blake to rekindle our fistfight.
  20. sober
    not affected by a chemical substance, especially alcohol
    So I attempted to defuse the situation with a sober and sincere-sounding lie.
  21. disaffected
    discontented as toward authority
    Monica smoked a cigarette, taking big, dramatic, disaffected drags.
  22. obvious
    easily perceived by the senses or grasped by the mind
    I’ll admit my question was a rather obvious way of asking what I didn’t have the nerve to say directly to Julia Bishop.
  23. patent
    an official document granting a right or privilege
    I worked myself up into an angry storm rather quickly; another Finn Easton patented wild mood swing.
  24. evasive
    deliberately vague or ambiguous
    Julia Bishop was nothing if not mysterious.
    She told me very little about her life, and why she’d come to move two thousand miles during the last months of her eleventh-grade year.
    Julia Bishop was beautiful and evasive.
  25. unbearable
    incapable of being put up with
    I was unbearably hot; I needed some air.
  26. exodus
    a journey by a large group to escape from a hostile environment
    It was as if all the words anyone ever dreamed up migrated from my head, through my mouth, and into Julia Bishop, a flooding exodus of everything uncontained, all those nouns, articles, verbs, emptying me completely.
  27. wretched
    of very poor quality or condition
    I was neither physically nor mentally prepared to deal with bathing the wretched odor of dead coyote atoms from Laika’s oily fur so early in the teenage day.
  28. ambient
    completely enveloping
    I thought, even on a Sunday morning there would be plenty of traffic noise through the canyon—obese weekend Harley riders traveling in packs up to the old bikers’ bar called the Rock Inn, airplanes flying overhead, the ambient weekend sounds of Southern California in its constant buzz and rumble.
  29. inordinate
    beyond normal limits
    For some reason, Burnt Mill Creek had an inordinately large population of Germans—families with last names such as Schwarzkopf, Grunwald, or Shoemaker.
  30. escort
    accompany
    So we didn’t really know what was going on with all the flags and the special visit and so on, but as soon as we got to first period history, Mr. Nossik escorted us to the gym, where the entire eleventh-grade class had gathered in order to hear a special message just for us from Governor Altvatter.
  31. cherubic
    having a sweet nature befitting an angel
    The assembly began with our cherubic lederhosen-and-Tyrolean-hat-wearing German Dance Club boys stomping their feet and slapping their naked pink knees.
  32. magnificence
    splendid or imposing in size or appearance
    And although the gym was eerily quiet (there were only about two hundred of us kids, after all), when he approached the speaker’s podium, Governor Altvatter raised his arms in the standardized politician’s gesture aimed at focusing a wildly enthusiastic crowd on the magnificence of his monstrous ego.
  33. acoustics
    the study of the physical properties of sound
    Given the bad acoustics of the gym, it was impossible to be certain the Burnt Mill Creek High School Pioneers weren’t actually chanting Altvatter!
  34. humility
    a lack of arrogance or false pride
    So the governor, beaming, raised his hands again and stared down at his notes on the podium with a look of practiced, aw-shucks humility on his face.
  35. testament
    strong evidence for something
    I have come here today to say job well done and congratulations, for being the history-making class in which every last one of you scored a rating of Advanced on last year’s California BEST Test. It is truly a testament to the leadership you fine young men and women have here at Burnt Mill Creek!
Created on Wed Aug 09 17:46:31 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Aug 16 13:35:59 EDT 2017)

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