Sadie: List 4

by Courtney Summers
After her sister is murdered, 19-year-old Sadie is determined to track down the killer. In the meantime, a popular podcast focuses on Sadie herself.

This list covers pages 197–308 in the 2018 Wednesday Books edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
40 words 13 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. vice
    a specific form of evildoing
    She chain smokes—the one vice she can't give up.
  2. recollection
    the process of remembering
    You can hear it, the devastation in her recollection.
  3. devoid
    completely wanting or lacking
    He wears a uniform as devoid of bluebirds as the rest of the place and is twirling a key ring around his finger—or trying to.
  4. quell
    overcome or allay
    I leave while his back is turned, my fingertips tingling, trying to quell my building panic.
  5. molder
    decay or break down
    I end up in the shower. The room is dark and I can smell moldering towels.
  6. curdle
    go bad or sour
    I check the fridge—gagging when the curdled smell of rotting food assaults my nose—and then I pull the blankets off the bed and toss them on the floor, strip the pillows.
  7. deja vu
    the experience of thinking a new situation already occurred
    The envelope feels light as Silas’s box and a sick sense of déjà vu washes over me.
  8. obscure
    make unclear, indistinct, or blurred
    The X crosses over his eyes, obscures most of his face, but I can picture him without it.
  9. convulse
    contract involuntarily, as in a spasm
    He swallows, his Adam’s apple convulsing.
  10. unintelligible
    poorly articulated or enunciated, or drowned by noise
    I push again and Ellis moans, near unintelligible with the fear I’m putting in him.
  11. smattering
    a small number or amount
    His eyes frantically search the room and even in all its chaos, and with a knife against his throat, he spots the IDs and the smattering of tags on the floor.
  12. diplomatic
    marked by tact in dealing with sensitive matters or people
    The address Cat Mather gave me—the one Sadie was headed to—turns out to be a motel called the Bluebird. The most diplomatic description I can give it is rustic, but really, it's holding on by a thread, the building doing a slow collapse in on itself.
  13. rustic
    awkwardly simple and provincial
    The address Cat Mather gave me—the one Sadie was headed to—turns out to be a motel called the Bluebird. The most diplomatic description I can give it is rustic, but really, it's holding on by a thread, the building doing a slow collapse in on itself.
  14. avian
    pertaining to or characteristic of birds
    It's got no avian aesthetic to earn it its name and in sixty days, its owner, Joe Perkins, will hand the keys over to Marcus Danforth, who will begin demolition.
  15. aesthetic
    a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful
    It's got no avian aesthetic to earn it its name and in sixty days, its owner, Joe Perkins, will hand the keys over to Marcus Danforth, who will begin demolition.
  16. flounder
    have difficulties; behave awkwardly
    “It was a stupid MMO game. It wasn’t any of the—any of the—” He waves his hands, floundering.
  17. bile
    a digestive juice secreted by the liver
    My stomach turned and then it turned again and next thing I knew, I was jerking the car onto the shoulder and then I was out of the car and on my knees, on the ground, throwing up bile into the dirt.
  18. untoward
    not in keeping with accepted standards of what is proper
    WEST McCRAY: And you didn't know about Silas? You never experienced any untoward...behavior from him when you….
  19. distraught
    deeply agitated especially from emotion
    Javi was too overwhelmed, too distraught, to understand the scope of what was happening.
  20. inkling
    a slight suggestion or vague understanding
    It sounds like she might have had an inkling something was going on from the outset.
  21. gradient
    a graded change in the magnitude of something
    Here, some parts are ravaged, others only a little down on their luck, then it turns into this economic gradient going up: nice, nicer, nicest.
  22. feral
    wild and menacing
    The closer I get to her, the more I see that she’s frail, a little feral.
  23. poised
    marked by balance or equilibrium and readiness for action
    I could stand over him, his switchblade in my hands, poised over his beating heart, and plunge it down, ending him.
  24. heady
    marked by defiant disregard for danger or consequences
    The thought, the heady thrill of it, guides me to the door and then my hand is on its handle, making the turn, when she panics.
  25. dumbstruck
    so surprised or shocked as to be unable to speak
    “C-come with me,” I tell her. She stares at me, dumbstruck.
  26. mottled
    having spots or patches of color
    She steps forward, hesitantly, doesn’t want to get too close to this monster girl with the mottled face.
  27. falter
    be or become weak, unsteady, or uncertain
    I take a faltering step forward and then steady myself, his quiet, edgeless voice turning me small, like that, turning me into a small girl, sick with the knowledge that she’s done this wrong.
  28. taut
    pulled or drawn tight
    His legs stretch up to his torso, his arms taut and muscular in a way I don’t remember them being when I was young.
  29. jeopardize
    put at risk
    It's easy to believe Claire would jeopardize her sobriety by returning to Cold Creek, but when she came back, she was motivated by her grief, not self-destruction.
  30. enormity
    the quality of being outrageous
    If I'm being honest, the enormity of what Claire revealed to me in that orchard still hasn't hit me yet:
    She was never in L.A.
  31. compensate
    adjust for
    Sadie's circumstances often forced her to compensate.
  32. predilection
    a predisposition in favor of something
    I don't know the extent of that man's ties to Keith, but from what Claire's telling me, it seems they have this predilection in common.
  33. hindsight
    understanding the nature of an event after it has happened
    I truly believed that she was going to kill me. But after she left...I don't know. Hindsight's twenty/twenty. But after, I don't think she would've gone through with it.
  34. adamant
    impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, or reason
    I told him we should at least go to the hospital and get him checked out, because he was clearly hurting, but he was adamant that he was fine, he was just a little sore, he just needed to sleep it off.
  35. devout
    deeply religious
    His parents were devout Christians who often kept to themselves.
  36. seemingly
    from appearances alone
    It happened suddenly, seemingly without explanation.
  37. voracious
    excessively greedy and grasping
    My daughter was reading voraciously then, she was always down at the used bookstore.
  38. altercation
    a noisy, angry argument or fight between people
    I believed an altercation occurred between him and Sadie.
  39. relentless
    not willing or able to stop or yield
    ...I have a hard time accepting that this alone would inspire her to relentlessly pursue him the way that she did.
  40. aftermath
    the outcome of an event
    We may never know what, exactly, happened between Sadie and Jack, but I know what I want to believe. And in this aftermath, it's Sadie's love for Mattie that remains, to fill in those gaps until—if, when—Sadie returns to tells us in her own words.
Created on Wed May 29 10:46:46 EDT 2019 (updated Mon Jun 03 17:16:22 EDT 2019)

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