Burning Blue: Chapters 1–15

by Paul Griffin
A beautiful girl in a wealthy New Jersey town is burned in a shocking attack. When hacker Jay Nazarro decides to investigate, he uncovers a long list of possible suspects.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–15, Chapters 16–29, Chapters 30–42, Chapters 43–55

Here are links to our lists for Adrift by Paul Griffin.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sublime
    of high moral or intellectual value
    Still, that afternoon, that moment, when that first molecule pierced her skin, was the beginning of our connection, one that led me into a darkness that was as twisted as it was sublime.
  2. ricochet
    spring back; spring away from an impact
    The first burst of downpour ricocheted upward at my eyes and stung my face like a sucker punch.
  3. impromptu
    with little or no preparation or forethought
    Nicole had already been late once, thanks to another impromptu make-out session with Dave.
  4. reflexive
    without volition or conscious control
    When one gets hit, the other reflexively closes down to protect what’s left of your vision.
  5. writhing
    moving in a twisting or snake-like or wormlike fashion
    You find somebody writhing on the floor, covering her face and screaming, you instinctively try to peel her hands away to see what the problem is.
  6. torso
    the body excluding the head and neck and limbs
    The front of each leg is nine percent of your skin's total surface area. Same with the back. The front of your torso: eighteen percent, the back too.
  7. omission
    leaving out or passing over something
    "The girls get nothing. The boys get the extra point. They're complete at one hundred percent. That's why women are stronger: We live with omission."
  8. elasticity
    the tendency of a body to return to its original shape
    I feel tapping and tugging and a vague sense my skin is being stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity.
  9. resistant
    impervious to being affected
    The bottle was new technology, coated on the inside with a flexible glass weave that was resistant to extreme heat, cold and in this case battery acid.
  10. dominance
    the state when one person or group has power over another
    A few cynics said Dave was doing ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DOMINANCE to look great to the Harvard admissions officers, but he was a shoo-in anyway.
  11. quash
    put down by force or intimidation
    More than that, I had proof that he was sincere in his efforts to quash bullying.
  12. aura
    a sensation that precedes the onset of certain disorders
    Maybe twenty seconds or so before the seizure I slip into this thing called an aura.
  13. kaleidoscope
    an optical toy in a tube
    The world slows down and stretches out as if I’m looking through a fish-eye lens or sometimes a kaleidoscope, everything hyper-colorful.
  14. obese
    excessively large
    My father was a strong dude before he decided to throw in the towel and become obese, three manicottis shy of a life-ending coronary.
  15. peripheral
    on or near an edge or constituting an outer boundary
    In my peripheral vision, Nicole was faking too.
  16. gawk
    look with amazement
    After maybe five seconds that felt like five minutes, Angela stopped gawking and headed out.
  17. derogatory
    expressive of low opinion
    What freshman doesn’t have a derogatory nickname pinned to him?
  18. humiliate
    cause to feel shame
    I felt even more humiliated since Angela had alluded to my spacing out—my seizures—in front of Nicole Castro.
  19. ogle
    stare or look at, especially with amorous intentions
    It’s not like she was poor, humiliating herself for a chance at college scholarship money like the rest of the girls strutting their bikinis past those ogling judges.
  20. ensconce
    fix firmly
    The real estate taxes her father was paying would have been double the amount of money required to ensconce her in the most expensive boarding school.
  21. solipsism
    the philosophical theory that the self is all that exists
    I had it in my mind that she’d grown up spending four hours a day in front of the mirror, narcissism to the point of solipsism.
  22. deign
    do something that one considers to be below one's dignity
    She was the queen of the Hollows, and here she was deigning to waste a few of her precious words on me, a kid from Valedale?
  23. transitory
    lasting a very short time
    It was a forgetting and an awakening at the same time, transitory but deep.
  24. rejoinder
    a quick reply to a question or remark
    “No rejoinder to my ‘almost cute,’ huh? You look like a vampire."
  25. ubiquitous
    being present everywhere at once
    Secondhand Civics were ubiquitous in New Jersey.
  26. aggrieve
    cause to feel distress
    I always looked exactly the same—same clothes, hair, expression, midway between bored and aggrieved.
  27. bifurcate
    split or divide into two
    I need to know that ramify and bifurcate are synonyms, if they even are?
  28. accrue
    grow by addition
    Accruing half a million dollars in high-interest loan debt for an engineering degree I can steal online?
  29. corrugated
    shaped into alternating parallel grooves and ridges
    We westbound folk made do with poorly patched corrugated metal that leaked rainwater the color of old blood.
  30. camouflage
    exploit the natural surroundings to disguise something
    An older model Civic was parked off the shoulder, somewhat camouflaged by the woods.
  31. empathy
    understanding and entering into another's feelings
    We’re doomed, the human race, when you have people like that walking around. Absolutely zero empathy.
  32. coveted
    greatly desired
    Even so, the rent wasn’t cheap in this last outpost of the coveted Brandywine zip code.
  33. doleful
    filled with or evoking sadness
    I recognized the piece, Rachmaninoff, Vespers, some doleful notes to be sure.
  34. emancipate
    give equal rights to
    I think I was pretty close to getting him to give up on me, and then I could emancipate and be free of whatever it was I was living, just this day-to-day grayness.
  35. inherent
    existing as an essential constituent or characteristic
    Why would I take on the risk inherent in stealing information from you when you’re willing to tell me everything about yourself for free?
  36. auction
    sell at a public sale to the highest bidder
    They had run a scam to get a shot of Nicole and auction it off to the highest bidder, splitting the take, end of story.
  37. horrendous
    causing fear or dread or terror
    After that little bit of peacefulness with Emma: another horrendous Nye session.
  38. topical
    pertaining to the surface of a body part
    They're all lined up so neatly on the bathroom counter: the vacuum-packed dressings coated with topical pain reliever, the latex-free surgical tape, the hydrogen peroxide, the prescription-grade antibiotic gel.
  39. cataclysmic
    severely destructive
    Not asking what happened is conceding that what happened is cataclysmic.
  40. waylay
    wait in hiding to attack
    I'm listening to all this from the tub, the water hotter than I can stand it, to waylay the cramps snaking into my calves after two brutal tennis matches that day.
Created on Thu Jan 22 19:21:17 EST 2015 (updated Mon Sep 10 15:54:34 EDT 2018)

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