Iveliz Explains It All: List 1

by Andrea Beatriz Arango
Unable to share her troubled feelings with anyone, twelve-year-old Iveliz Margarita Snow Medina addresses her journal in poems that describe her life in Maryland.

This list covers "Second Chances"–"I Promise Amir I Won't Hit Anyone."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3
25 words 103 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. insist
    assert to be true
    If you ask my teachers,
    they might say I’m a liar,
    because I always insist
    things are not my fault.
  2. anxious
    causing or fraught with or showing nervousness
    And if you ask my mom,
    she might say que soy una dramática,
    ’cause she used to sometimes think
    my old panic attacks
    were about getting attention
    and not an anxious brain response.
  3. intervention
    care provided to improve a situation
    It means:
    In School Behavior Intervention.
    It means:
    I messed up my second chance.
  4. practically
    almost; nearly
    Jessica and Justin G.? They NEVER get in trouble,
    even though they’re the ones being terrible
    practically nonstop.
  5. privilege
    a special advantage or benefit not enjoyed by all
    She always says how lucky she is.
    How all she had to do was grab her passport and board a plane,
    how she has so much PRIVILEGE
    because she didn’t have to risk her life
  6. drawl
    speak in a slow and drawn out way
    Girrrrrl, he drawls out, accent thick and warm,
    full of crawfish and Louisiana swamp:
    There’s more to poetry than words.
  7. generator
    engine that converts mechanical energy into electricity
    Dad mailed a generator for Mimi
    so she could have AC,
    ’cause the island was all out of generators
  8. tarp
    a sheet of waterproofed canvas
    Puerto Rico was freaking unbelievable.
    Blue tarps stretching farther than the eye can see—
    literally whole mountains speckled with blue roofs
    and roads broken in half like they were twigs.
  9. suspend
    bar temporarily
    I mean literally the whole point of this is to punish
    without suspending kids outside,
    but then they send me to a room
    where I miss school anyways
    and expect me not to fall behind.
  10. quatrain
    a stanza of four lines
    You’re MY journal and they’re MY poems.
    And if it’s not for school,
    who cares if I write in “quatrains” or have “rhyme schemes”?
  11. stuffy
    lacking fresh air
    Half the windows are jammed so hard they don’t open,
    and the rooms are all stuffy and carpeted beige.
  12. casual
    without or seeming to be without plan or method; offhand
    I told Amir about the Tania mix-up.
    Very casual.
    Just threw it in when we were talking at school.
  13. camouflage
    an outward semblance misrepresenting the nature of something
    To watch his eyes and eyebrows and cheeks
    and match them,
    like I’m an octopus in camouflage
    or I’m wearing a mask.
  14. dementia
    mental deterioration of organic or functional origin
    Grandpa Irfan, he had dementia, Amir continues, and it was getting pretty bad, and when the soldiers asked him what he was doing, he said he was looking for samosas to fry up that night.
  15. mandate
    assign under an official instruction or command
    Gardening class
    is one of my exploratories at school.
    An “exploratory” being what they call “specials”
    in middle school,
    like it’ll make us appreciate band more
    if it’s “an exploration”
    and not a class mandated by law.
  16. drench
    cover with liquid; pour liquid onto
    We have arroz guisado,
    which is my favorite,
    with tofu the way I like it—
    roasted slow in the oven and hot sauce drenched.
  17. deja vu
    the experience of thinking a new situation already occurred
    So I pitch my idea
    again
    and she likes it
    again
    but everything is kinda buzzy and strange,
    like I’m stuck in a déjà vu loop
    that doesn’t know when to end.
  18. bound
    very likely; almost certain to happen
    I turn around so fast
    I literally slap myself in the face with my own hair,
    and by the time Jessica turns around too,
    all laughing teeth and blond hair and poison eyes,
    a crowd of phones has appeared out of nowhere,
    recording what I’m sure they think
    is bound to be an epic fight.
  19. neutral
    a disengaged position, as of gears
    It’s weird how fast it can happen.
    How I can go from neutral
    to revved up
    in three seconds flat.
  20. revert
    go back to a previous state
    I calm down, obvio,
    but I still end up here, in the counselor’s office,
    where Mrs. Mohr slowly takes off her glasses
    and asks me real serious
    why my behavior is reverting,
    when she thought the anger
    was past us and
    the fighting
    long gone.
  21. underestimate
    make too low an approximation of
    I guess I underestimated how much I usually talk to Amir.
  22. mirage
    something illusory and unattainable
    But at lunch, this girl I’ve seen before
    walks by the tree I’m leaning against
    and stops,
    long shiny black hair and puffy eyes,
    her face both a question
    and a sort of friendship mirage.
  23. shift
    the time period during which you are at work
    They arrive on Tuesday morning,
    which means Mami paid extra for fast shipping,
    even though I know that’ll mean more shifts at Safeway
    and less ice cream late at night.
  24. frustration
    a feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized
    I throw the dusty bag on the floor
    in frustration,
    try to shake off all the black crumbs
  25. revenge
    action taken in return for an injury or offense
    But it’s kind of a stupid promise,
    because revenge is about so much more than violence,
    and if I’m sneaky enough, I won’t get caught.
Created on Sat Jan 06 15:16:12 EST 2024 (updated Sun Jan 07 10:39:49 EST 2024)

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