100 Sideways Miles: Part 2: Unlucky Lindy - I Need An Extra Bag

by Andrew Smith
Nothing ever seems to go in the direction Finn Easton wants, but with the help of his best friend and new girlfriend, he might finally be able to escape the shadow of his father's bestselling novel.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part 1: The Quit Mission-The Politics of Teenage Grudges, Part 1: My Neighbor Julia-The Governor of California, Part 2: Unlucky Lindy-I Need an Extra Bag, Part 2: The Boy in the Book-Going Home, Part 3

Here are links to our lists for works by Andrew Smith: 100 Sideways Miles, Winger
35 words 12 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. absolute
    complete and without restriction or qualification
    Think about how fast twenty miles per second is: It is so fast that every last thing on the planet of humans and dogs is, in essence, traveling at just about the same absolute speed—whether you’re talking about a jet aircraft in flight, a dead horse falling from the sky, or the entire state of Oklahoma at rest.
  2. aviator
    someone who operates an aircraft
    About one week, twelve million miles, after my family returned home from New York City, our history teacher, Mr. Nossik, dressed up as the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh.
  3. flustered
    thrown into a state of agitated confusion
    And I’ll admit it—sometimes when Cade Hernandez looked at me with that particular expression, I’d get flustered and embarrassed and have to turn away in frustration...
  4. martyr
    torture and torment a sufferer
    The old tight-buttoned fool never realized he was only making Cade out to be a bigger, more martyred hero in the hearts of his classmates.
  5. prowess
    a superior skill learned by study and practice
    For all his button-pushing prowess, Cade Hernandez was honestly sad about the way Mr. Nossik treated him at times, and I couldn’t blame him for it.
  6. exasperated
    greatly annoyed; out of patience
    He sighed, exasperated. “What is it, Mr. Hernandez?”
  7. obsess
    be preoccupied with something
    And Cade, in the loveliest voice imaginable, said this: “Mr. Nossik, I read that Charles Lindbergh was more than a little racist, that he was obsessed with white supremacy—as though he believed the most urgent priority for us during the Second World War was not to defeat totalitarianism but to preserve the white race. Was that really true?”
  8. totalitarianism
    a form of government in which the ruler is unconstrained
    And Cade, in the loveliest voice imaginable, said this: “Mr. Nossik, I read that Charles Lindbergh was more than a little racist, that he was obsessed with white supremacy—as though he believed the most urgent priority for us during the Second World War was not to defeat totalitarianism but to preserve the white race. Was that really true?”
  9. aneurysm
    an abnormal bulge caused by weakening of an artery wall
    Mr. Nossik died the next day from a brain aneurysm.
  10. unravel
    become undone
    I was scared I would ruin it, that things would unravel in the most horrible ways, and that I would have to go on simply pretending—as always—to be fine.
  11. quirk
    a strange attitude or habit
    As a practice, I prefer to avoid abbreviations and to write out numbers, as opposed to using numerals. It’s one of my quirks, like calculating distances rather than time.
  12. irreplaceable
    impossible to substitute for
    The power plant was easily replaced, although nobody knows for certain how many irreplaceable people had been swallowed up in William Mulholland’s churning liquid knackery.
  13. befall
    become of; happen to
    One month before the disaster, a medicine man hunting deer in the canyon claimed to have received a vision of the catastrophe that would befall the dam.
  14. meander
    move or cause to move in a winding or curving course
    The majority of Southern Californians simply assumed William Mulholland must have been someone magnificent because he had such a nice road, which meandered through the wealthiest communities in Los Angeles, named for him.
  15. underlying
    in the nature of something though not readily apparent
    Usually, whenever someone asked me if I felt like I was going to have a seizure, which I could tell was Julia’s underlying question, it would make me angry.
  16. plague
    annoy continually or chronically
    I had been plagued by the thought that Julia Bishop had kissed me—and run her delicious and soothing hand up inside my shirt—only because she’d felt sorry for the poor epileptic kid who had never been kissed in all those miles of his life.
  17. contemporary
    characteristic of the present
    It made it easier to lure Christians and Muslims onto the aliens’ dinner plates, but it also upset a lot of contemporary readers here on the planet of humans and dogs.
  18. incarcerate
    lock up or confine, in or as in a jail
    Charlie Mahan never said one word the entire time he was incarcerated, which caused most of the other men in Pontiac to call him Dummy.
  19. monolithic
    imposing in size or bulk or solidity
    Julia and I could look up at the canyon rims on either side of us and imagine the towering monolithic face of a one-hundred-fifty-foot-tall death trap that stretched across the sky from west to east.
  20. intern
    someone who works for an expert to learn about a job
    When Julia and I were inside the museum, the worker there—an acne-faced boy who couldn’t have been much older than nineteen and dressed in the green uniform of an Angeles National Forest intern warden—assumed we had come in because we were lost or had witnessed a traffic accident in the canyon, which, he explained, were the two most common reasons why the door to the museum ever opened.
  21. warden
    the chief official in charge of a prison
    When Julia and I were inside the museum, the worker there—an acne-faced boy who couldn’t have been much older than nineteen and dressed in the green uniform of an Angeles National Forest intern warden—assumed we had come in because we were lost or had witnessed a traffic accident in the canyon, which, he explained, were the two most common reasons why the door to the museum ever opened.
  22. ogle
    stare or look at, especially with amorous intentions
    I did not appreciate the leering way the kid ogled Julia Bishop.
  23. eclectic
    selecting what seems best of various styles or ideas
    The museum housed a rather eclectic assortment of display items: a scale-model diorama of the pre-disaster dam and reservoir, handwritten letters and journal entries from survivors, a bent and mangled pressed-tin toy automobile...
  24. diorama
    a three-dimensional representation of a scene
    The museum housed a rather eclectic assortment of display items: a scale-model diorama of the pre-disaster dam and reservoir, handwritten letters and journal entries from survivors, a bent and mangled pressed-tin toy automobile that was unearthed in the rubble...
  25. unearth
    recover through digging
    The museum housed a rather eclectic assortment of display items: a scale-model diorama of the pre-disaster dam and reservoir, handwritten letters and journal entries from survivors, a bent and mangled pressed-tin toy automobile that was unearthed in the rubble...
  26. homestead
    the house and adjacent grounds occupied by a family
    Barefoot and injured, Danny's mother carried him up the steep canyon wall that towered above their homestead.
  27. kinship
    a close connection marked by common interests or character
    Julia theorized that perhaps the girls felt sad for me, that we had some kind of a kinship because of what had fallen from the sky onto us all, so they were looking out to see if I’d be okay.
  28. diaspora
    the dispersion of something that was originally localized
    Rumors spread like a diaspora of atoms in the knackery of the universe, always getting rendered into something else and something else.
  29. outrage
    a feeling of righteous anger
    When you think about it, the theoretical science behind the Lazarus Doors in my father’s The Lazarus Door kind of made sense, and also contributed to the level of outrage and craziness that resulted in reaction to the book.
  30. careen
    move at high speed and in an uncontrolled way
    So my announcement at the driving range caused Cade Hernandez to hook his driver badly and send his ball careening into the protective nets at the front of the parking lot.
  31. slaughterhouse
    a building where animals are butchered
    I was sweating like a pig at the front of the slaughterhouse waiting line.
  32. splatter
    cause or allow to run or flow from a container
    I argued, “I suppose you’d get on that roller coaster even if the car in front of you skipped the tracks and splattered everyone riding in it all over the pavement.”
  33. provocative
    serving or tending to excite or stimulate
    One of his eyebrows drawbridged provocatively.
  34. rapt
    feeling great delight and interest
    Everyone watched Cade and me in rapt attention.
  35. aloof
    distant, cold, or detached in manner
    He was obviously interested but maintained his aloof law-enforcement defense barrier.
Created on Wed Aug 09 17:54:31 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Aug 16 14:03:44 EDT 2017)

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