Darius the Great Is Not Okay: Chapters 20–26

by Adib Khorram
Darius has always struggled to fit in: he suffers from depression, he is bullied at school, and he can never seem to meet his father's high expectations. When Darius's family travels to Iran to visit his grandparents, Darius finds a place where he belongs, and a true friendship, for the first time.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–5, Chapters 6–10, Chapters 11–14, Chapters 15–19, Chapters 20–26, Chapters 27–36
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. plume
    form anything that resembles a feather
    The Smokemobile’s exhaust plumed around us.
  2. guillotine
    instrument of execution used for beheading people
    Once Dad got out, Babou climbed in next to Mom and slid the door shut with the finality of a guillotine
  3. pare
    remove the edges from and cut down to the desired size
    He nodded at the couch behind him, then went back to paring the stalks of fresh cilantro from the colander next to him.
  4. colander
    bowl-shaped strainer used to wash or drain foods
    He nodded at the couch behind him, then went back to paring the stalks of fresh cilantro from the colander next to him.
  5. assimilate
    take (gas, light or heat) into a solution
    The Dancing Fan had been creeping up on Dad, a relentless Borg drone determined to assimilate us both, but as soon as he glanced at it, it stopped moving.
  6. futile
    producing no result or effect
    Resistance was futile.
  7. inversion
    turning upside down; setting on end
    My stomach experienced a gravitic inversion.
  8. gamut
    a complete extent or range
    Persian Casual covers a wide gamut, from slightly more-formal-than-business-casual to just-shy-of-black-tie-or-full-military-dress.
  9. garish
    tastelessly showy
    The only thing worse than being perpetually underdressed was being garishly overdressed.
  10. ostentatious
    intended to attract notice and impress others
    Then everyone would whisper behind our backs (in Farsi, of course) about how ostentatious we were.
  11. incoherent
    unable to express yourself clearly or fluently
    And then Babou started shouting.
    It was incoherent and garbled and venomous.
  12. succumb
    be fatally overwhelmed
    Without our binary stars holding us together, our orbits decayed until the Bahrami family solar system succumbed to entropy and broke apart.
  13. entropy
    energy in a system no longer available for mechanical work
    Without our binary stars holding us together, our orbits decayed until the Bahrami family solar system succumbed to entropy and broke apart.
  14. gruff
    deep and harsh sounding as if from shouting or emotion
    Ardeshir Bahrami had always seemed severe to me, for as long as I had known him. Even when I was a child and he was a scary figure on Mom’s computer monitor with a gruff voice and a bushy mustache.
  15. transpire
    come about, happen, or occur
    Mamou and Babou—who had finally reemerged, acting as if nothing unusual had transpired—gave me a crisp white button-up shirt.
  16. implication
    a meaning that is not expressly stated but can be inferred
    “Well. Not really. He just, like, patted me on my stomach. But that was the implication.”
  17. infernal
    being of the underworld
    It sounded like the infernal spawn of a Persian drum beat and a dozen Celtic fiddles.
  18. ensue
    take place or happen afterward or as a result
    At Persian parties we’d stand together in the corner, watching all the older Persian men play, laughing at the arguments that inevitably ensued even if we couldn’t understand a word that was said.
  19. concentric
    having a common center
    The enormous dish was white with concentric rings of tiny green leaves on it.
  20. patter
    make light, rapid and repeated sounds
    She ran up and down the hallway, singing at the top of her lungs, her feet pattering on the tiles as she danced.
  21. concur
    be in agreement
    Mamou found us like that, Laleh laughing at the television, me reading my book and concurring with my sister when necessary.
  22. mercurial
    liable to sudden unpredictable change
    Her personality was too big and mercurial to be contained in a frail human body.
  23. accretion
    the formation of a celestial object by the effect of gravity
    If his face was a supernova before, it became an accretion disc—one of the brightest objects in the universe—as soon as he tasted his lettuce.
  24. dappled
    having spots or patches of color
    Scrubby trees dotted the lawn, casting dappled shadows over the benches scattered around.
  25. commandeer
    take arbitrarily or by force
    Back home, every family makes too much of whatever dish they are most famous for—dolmeh and salad olivieh and kotlet—and we commandeer an entire park so there’s room for pretty much every Persian, Fractional or otherwise, in a fifty-mile radius.
  26. dubious
    open to doubt or suspicion
    I was heavier than Sohrab, and the fence’s structural integrity was highly dubious.
  27. clamber
    climb awkwardly, as if by scrambling
    I clambered up after Sohrab, convinced the fence was going to peel off the building like the lid of a soup can just before I reached the top.
  28. spire
    a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building
    They looked like the jeweled spires of some Elven palace from a prior age of this world, made of mithril and sapphire and magic and will.
  29. surreptitiously
    in a secretive manner
    I leaned down to surreptitiously sniff my armpit.
  30. minaret
    a slender tower with balconies, especially on a mosque
    The minarets of the Jameh Mosque sparkled in the sunlight as I used my tongue to dig a piece of lettuce out from between my teeth.
  31. heed
    pay close attention to
    We listened to the voice in the speakers chant, and I imagined everyone in the Jameh Mosque kneeling to pray, and all the people in Yazd heeding the call, and even farther out, a neural network spread throughout the entire country and to the Iranian diaspora across the whole planet.
  32. diaspora
    the dispersion of something that was originally localized
    We listened to the voice in the speakers chant, and I imagined everyone in the Jameh Mosque kneeling to pray, and all the people in Yazd heeding the call, and even farther out, a neural network spread throughout the entire country and to the Iranian diaspora across the whole planet.
  33. pulsar
    a degenerate neutron star that emits polarized radiation
    I was one tiny pulsar in a swirling, luminous galaxy of Iranians, held together by the gravity of thousands of years of culture and heritage.
  34. succor
    assistance in time of difficulty
    “Who do you turn to?” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “When you need succor?”
  35. muss
    make messy or untidy
    “I’m glad we are friends, Darioush,” he said. He reached up and mussed my hair. I liked how he did that. “I’m glad you are here.”
Created on Tue Feb 26 16:35:38 EST 2019 (updated Wed Feb 27 12:03:00 EST 2019)

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