Picture Us in the Light: Chapters 13–20

by Kelly Loy Gilbert
High school senior Danny Cheng is grappling with his identity as an artist, the death of a classmate, and a painful crush on his best friend. When he finds evidence that his parents are hiding a painful secret, his determination to uncover the truth will change his life forever.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Prologue–Chapter 2, Chapters 3–6, Chapters 7–12, Chapters 13–20, Chapters 21–28
40 words 111 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. loll
    hang loosely or laxly
    I hole up in my room trying not to hear my parents scuttling around their room packing, the drawers rolling open and closed like tongues lolling.
  2. scrabble
    grope, scratch, or feel searchingly
    I hear them Thursday, nine days before moving day, when I wake up in the middle of the night, my half-asleep mind scrabbling around to root myself back in the world I know.
  3. misgiving
    uneasiness about the fitness of an action
    And I push away my misgivings from last night and think about asking them if I can keep going to school here.
  4. don
    put on clothes
    I try to imagine him donning a uniform, chasing a bunch of kids away from overpriced bags, and my chest pinches with guilt.
  5. incisive
    suitable for cutting or piercing
    In the heat of the moment whenever we fight I want to hurt them, want to say something barbed and incisive, and it works for as long as they’re angry back, as long as my words have no powers of weaponry.
  6. gamely
    in a plucky or sporting manner
    I didn’t believe him that he’d actually help—I envisioned him sprawled out on my bed watching me do it—but he gamely tapes boxes together and pulls clothes from my closet and folds them like the perfectionist he is.
  7. squatter
    someone who lives on a property without right or title
    “Don’t squatters have a lot of rights in California?” I say when I pick up. “Didn’t you tell me that once?”
  8. parse
    analyze the sentence structure of
    “Right,” she says, and I can’t quite parse the tones in her voice.
  9. bureaucratic
    of or relating to unnecessary procedures and red tape
    I’d thought maybe the feeling would break open when I actually got here, that the place would carry that bland bureaucratic reassuring schooly feel schools sometimes do even when they aren’t yours, but this one doesn’t.
  10. tinny
    thin, metallic, and displeasing in sound
    A bell rings, the sound tinny and sharp compared to our bell at home.
  11. consign
    commit forever
    I stand there in front of her desk for five minutes, watching them play out on the clock, trying to psych myself up to hand over my forms and consign myself to a life here.
  12. jut
    extend out or project in space
    It’s a selfie of him making a sad face, his lower lip jutting out, and he’s written: this sucks.
  13. euphoric
    characterized by a feeling of well-being or elation
    A rush of pure, euphoric relief. All the worry that’s been coursing through me lifts.
  14. tandem
    an arrangement of objects or persons one behind another
    And—here in this god-awful place I have no business being in, this stupid detour my life has taken—some part of me zooms back to that day in my dad’s lab and how I watched all those people’s atoms revolting against their own aloneness, leaping into a tandem existence with the people they loved.
  15. embellishment
    elaboration of an interpretation with decorative detail
    Her real voice, the one she uses in private, is pitched lower than her public one—plain and unadorned, missing all the embellishments she has when addressing a roomful of people, or a group.
  16. amalgam
    a combination or blend of diverse things
    I know she’s always kind of stressed in the way you are about things you care about, but still she makes latenights a place you actually want to be, that same particular amalgam of frenetic and cozy you get with group projects that go really late into the night and that I wonder whether you ever get again after high school.
  17. ulterior
    lying beyond what is openly revealed or avowed
    Regina knows perfectly well it’s a garbage suggestion, that her ulterior motive is to make some kind of political statement, I’m sure, but Sandra doesn’t; Sandra will never know anything again.
  18. incessantly
    without interruption
    It was always like that, the way they’d text incessantly about even the smallest things like sending each other pictures of what they were going to wear to school or the way they’d read books together so they could call each other at midnight and complain about characters they hated...
  19. iteration
    the act or process of doing or saying again
    I draw so many iterations of Sandra.
  20. deferential
    showing courteous regard for people's feelings
    I draw him a mild, deferential I’m-in-public-talking-to-other-white-people expression.
  21. stark
    severely simple
    We’d talked about all the different things we could include in the center spread, interviews or hotline numbers or a photo collage, but in the end Regina wanted something stark and simple, lots of white space.
  22. trappings
    ornaments; embellishments to or characteristic signs of
    If they really love each other, if they’re right for each other and they flood all those empty spaces around one another with enough warmth and light to hold at bay all the worst trappings of the world, then if I care about them, that should be enough for me.
  23. spiel
    artful or slick talk used to persuade
    “And he cornered me and gave me this long spiel about how he has Chinese American daughters and how important it is for his daughters to get to see Chinese American leaders and how he’s very passionate about China and Chinese Americans in America. I was like, um, all right, thank you?”
  24. elitist
    one who is biased in favor of those with high status
    “Come on, Danny, not like that. You always think I’m such an elitist. He was just like extremely venture capital-y, you know? I can’t imagine your dad, like, getting steaks with him in Palo Alto or whatever. Do you think maybe your mom—didn’t you say for a while your mom—”
    I stare at him hard until he looks away.
  25. idyllic
    charmingly simple and serene
    Idyllic, even: there were literal deer wandering around our neighborhood sometimes—they’d come down from the foothills and scavenge in people’s yards, garden pests—and I never fully absorbed how comforting it was to live in the center of my life, my school and all my friends and all the places I frequented all huddled together in their safe, tight radius.
  26. implicit
    being without doubt or reserve
    It was the first time I remember understanding that something someone told you in implicit trust could hold so much power, and I wish I could say I understood it only after the fact.
  27. dissertation
    a treatise advancing a point of view resulting from research
    He was someone who got quiet when he was upset—maybe he still does—and his face turned hard and finally, when the parents who were out there that day (they all traded off teaching sections and writing dissertations and watching all of us) weren’t paying attention, he kneed me in the crotch.
  28. jaunt
    a journey taken for pleasure
    They didn’t say much about the trip—every time Auntie Monica asked about it my mom laughed it off and said oh, it was nothing, just a little jaunt.
  29. assent
    agree or express agreement
    Your mother assents. Your fate is sealed.
  30. id
    primitive instincts and energies underlying psychic activity
    I’m beyond tired, at that stage of sleep deprivation where you start to feel more like a limbed id than a real person, but I lie awake most of the night.
  31. sentry
    a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
    It’s early still when I get to campus, but the newspapers are here, stacked outside each classroom like sentries.
  32. splay
    widen or spread apart
    Mr. Denton, the assistant principal, stands when I come in, his hands splayed across his hips.
  33. benign
    kind in disposition or manner
    He’s probably my favorite of the APs—he’s always seemed the most human—but he’s also always seemed baffled by us and all the ways we aren’t the white jocks and cheerleaders in his old yearbook photos, always casting himself as wearily, benignly bewildered by us and by our parents who come to argue with varying amounts of English about our grades and complain about our teachers.
  34. disheveled
    in disarray; extremely disorderly
    Next to Mrs. Chan they look disheveled and whole magnitudes more panicked.
  35. covert
    secret or hidden
    And how we must have understood that, which is why we did this covertly instead of asking permission, right?
  36. inextricable
    incapable of being disentangled or untied
    Someone you grew up with dies, someone whose history is inextricable from your own, and you’re supposed to what, exactly—talk to random counselors about grief and acceptance, feel proud that you’ve gotten over something you really should never get over?
  37. barrage
    the rapid and continuous delivery of communication
    And then a barrage of threats—
    “You won’t go back to Cupertino,” my mom says.
  38. careen
    move sideways or in an unsteady way
    I can feel myself careening past control and I can feel, too, the lure of obliterating whatever part of me might still feel regret or shame.
  39. discrete
    constituting a separate entity or part
    And even as it happens I can feel how many times this scene will play across my mind and how even after that I still won’t quite be able to separate the sequence of events, break them down into discrete moments.
  40. infinitesimal
    immeasurably small
    The truth is that I saw the telephone pole, and in that split second I understood what I was doing, that if I swerved, just moved my hands a matter of inches, I would cede control, and for an infinitesimal amount of time that felt like some kind of out.
Created on Thu Jan 23 16:11:17 EST 2020 (updated Fri Jan 24 11:54:12 EST 2020)

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