A Scatter of Light: List 2

by Malinda Lo
This companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club takes place fifty years later and follows eighteen-year-old Aria Tang West who spends the summer with her artistic grandmother in California.

This list covers pages 67–124 of the 2022 Dutton Books edition.

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

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. poised
    marked by balance or equilibrium and readiness for action
    I still had my phone in my hand and I even unlocked it, my thumb poised over the text messages icon, when I heard a car come down the street.
  2. sparse
    not dense or plentiful
    The front door opened into the living room, which was sparsely furnished, as if Mel had just moved in.
  3. careen
    move at high speed and in an uncontrolled way
    San Francisco was all sunshine and steep hills. When the Jeep careened up and over Divisadero, Lisa let out a whoop.
  4. arresting
    commanding attention
    One poster featured an arresting photo of a young Asian woman sitting on the floor next to a large blue-and-white abstract painting.
  5. frumpy
    drab, old-fashioned, and unattractive
    The woman was wearing paint-splattered pants, a frumpy blue sweater, and a slightly sly smile.
  6. enigmatic
    not clear to the understanding
    I looked more closely at the painting behind Bernice, with her enigmatic smile.
  7. expansive
    able or tending to extend in one or more directions
    “Expansive. It makes me think of space. No, planets. Look at that orangey spot. It’s like that storm on Jupiter, the one that looks like an eye.”
  8. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    Down the hill and past the playground was a stage, where a DJ was playing dance music that reverberated up the slope toward us.
  9. dun
    a color or pigment varying around a light grey-brown color
    It was so different from the beach parties at Haley’s parents’ house on Martha’s Vineyard, which I remembered in palettes of sand and dun and white linen.
  10. interloper
    someone who intrudes on the privacy or property of another
    At first I felt like an interloper, but after a couple of blocks, I realized there was so much going on, nobody was paying any attention to me.
  11. elude
    be incomprehensible to
    I wanted to know what the swirling mass of color meant to Bernice. I studied her photo in the documentary poster, but she eluded me.
  12. emanate
    proceed or issue forth, as from a source
    A beam of light emanated from each sun, and as it struck the atmosphere, which was symbolized by a fuzzy white line, particles of light were reflected in all directions.
  13. wiry
    lean but strong
    The teacher, who sat cross-legged on a low platform in front of the altar, was a wiry, balding white man with a bushy gray mustache.
  14. erroneously
    in a mistaken manner
    When I was a child, I thought erroneously that we were closer to the sun during the summer, and closest at the summer solstice. Of course I learned later on that the seasons have nothing to do with how close or far the earth is from the sun. It’s the tilt of the earth’s axis, instead, that marks the seasons.
  15. paradoxical
    seemingly contradictory but nonetheless possibly true
    At this time of year, the northern hemisphere is most tilted toward the sun, making it warmer in our neck of the woods. Paradoxically, the earth is actually closest to the sun during our winter.
  16. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    The stones frame this constant change with the illusion of permanence, and for a moment—while we are watching the sun framed by the stones—for a fleeting second the world seems stable.
  17. inevitably
    in such a manner as could not be otherwise
    But you know what makes it a miracle? The fact that we are present in that moment, experiencing it fully, before it inevitably changes.
  18. dissipate
    go away, scatter, or disappear
    I expected it would hurt to see them like that, so young and happy, but the twinge I felt soon dissipated, and then I was studying the images as if they were celebrities or criminals.
  19. titular
    of or pertaining to the name of a work of art
    In the titular poem, “Diving into the Wreck,” the narrator puts on scuba gear and dives into the ocean to explore a shipwreck.
  20. inextricably
    in a manner incapable of being disentangled or untied
    I thought of the Bernice Bing painting with the swirl of color surrounded by darkness, and in my mind her painting became inextricably linked to the poem.
  21. frond
    compound leaf of a fern or palm or cycad
    She kept swimming the wrong way, and the current would push her back over and over again, like the waves in the ocean pushing a frond of seaweed out and out.
  22. tenuous
    weak or unstable
    I felt superstitious about it, as if any tenuous friendship I’d begun with Steph and Mel would definitely vanish if I talked about it.
  23. suggestive
    tending to hint at something improper or indecent
    “He definitely remembers you,” Tasha said suggestively.
  24. flourish
    a showy gesture
    He served her slices of rare tri-tip first, with a flourish.
  25. swath
    a path or strip (also figurative)
    There was a group of people lit up by a bonfire, with a great swath of darkness behind them.
  26. abashed
    feeling or caused to feel uneasy and self-conscious
    He seemed slightly abashed, but not enough to resist their encouragement.
  27. buoyant
    characterized by liveliness and lightheartedness
    His smile was that perfect summer-boy grin—freckles, white teeth, blue eyes—slightly sheepish but mostly self-confident. He had a buoyant spirit I was drawn to right away.
  28. coy
    affectedly shy especially in a playful or provocative way
    “I don’t know,” I said coyly.
  29. incontrovertible
    impossible to deny or disprove
    This was incontrovertible evidence that he liked me, and I think it was that knowledge that thrilled me, not Nathan himself.
  30. elated
    full of high-spirited delight
    I was both elated and distant, physically present but mentally detached.
  31. trundle
    move along on or as if on wheels or a wheeled vehicle
    I heard the clanging of tools and the rumble of the wheelbarrow as it was pushed out into the yard. Thump, thump, clang. The door creaking again, closing. Footsteps and the wheelbarrow, trundling away.
  32. condescending
    characteristic of those who treat others with arrogance
    “Thanks for the words of wisdom,” she said.
    I flushed. “Sorry. I mean, I didn’t mean to be condescending.”
  33. tentative
    hesitant or lacking confidence; unsettled in mind or opinion
    When she stepped back, she was holding a dry fragment of an oak leaf, and her face had a tentative expression on it, as if she wasn’t sure if she should have done that.
  34. resigned
    accepting that something unpleasant cannot be changed
    “Are you still angry about the summer?” He sounded resigned.
  35. refract
    subject to change in direction of a propagating wave
    A refracting telescope would invert the image, and similarly, the Rolleiflex flipped it horizontally.
Created on Fri Feb 17 10:58:47 EST 2023 (updated Wed Mar 08 14:31:14 EST 2023)

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