Everything, Everything: List 5: Pretending - This Life

by Nicola Yoon
Diagnosed with a rare immune disorder, Madeline is unable to experience the world outside her protective bubble. But when Olly moves in next door, she must decide whether to risk everything for love.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1: The White Room-Astronaut Ice Cream, List 2: Everything's A Risk-Upside Down, List 3: Skin-Infected, List 4: TTYL-Select All, Delete, List 5: Pretending-This Life

Here is a link to our lists for Nicola Yoon's novel The Sun Is Also a Star
45 words 170 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. nihilist
    someone who rejects all theories of morality
    Nothing hurts except my heart, but I’m trying not to use it. I keep the blinds closed. I read my books. Existential or nihilist ones. I have no patience for books that pretend life has meaning.
  2. administer
    give or apply, as a medication
    My mom is still trying to fix me. She hovers. And worries and fusses and administers.
  3. coax
    influence or persuade by gentle and persistent urging
    Now that I’m stronger she coaxes me back into our mother-daughter nights.
  4. rubble
    the remains of something that has been destroyed
    Subject: limerick #2
    Sent: October 17, 8:03 PM
    once lived a girl in a bubble
    who i suspected was nothing but trouble
    still i gave her my heart
    but she blew it apart
    and left me with nothing but rubble
  5. verify
    check or regulate by conducting a parallel experiment
    I believe that you should get another physician besides your mother to verify my findings.
  6. fragile
    easily broken or damaged or destroyed
    I believe that your immune system is especially fragile given what I could surmise about the nature of your upbringing.
  7. surmise
    infer from incomplete evidence
    I believe that your immune system is especially fragile given what I could surmise about the nature of your upbringing.
  8. elude
    be incomprehensible to
    I read the e-mail six times before the letters form words and the words form sentences that I can understand, but, even then, the meaning of all the words taken together eludes me.
  9. complicated
    difficult to analyze or understand
    “SCID is so rare and so complicated, honey. Not everyone understands it. There are just so many versions and every person reacts a little differently.”
  10. burgeon
    grow and flourish
    She had a burgeoning suspicion that the world was laughing at her.
  11. recover
    get over an illness or shock
    “Sometimes I think maybe your mama’s not quite right. Maybe she never recovered from what happened to your papa and brother.”
  12. insubstantial
    lacking material form
    She puts her hand on my back and I sink under the weight of it. I’m insubstantial. I’m Olly’s ghost girl again.
  13. chaotic
    completely unordered and unpredictable and confusing
    Crazy, jumbled, chaotic writings don’t cover every inch of the wall.
  14. meticulous
    marked by precise accordance with details
    My mom is meticulous and extravagant in her record keeping.
  15. prenatal
    occurring or existing before birth
    The record of my life starts with her pregnancy. I find prenatal vitamin recommendations, sonograms, and photocopies of each visit to the doctor.
  16. sonogram
    image produced by reflections of high-frequency sound waves
    The record of my life starts with her pregnancy. I find prenatal vitamin recommendations, sonograms, and photocopies of each visit to the doctor.
  17. eczema
    an inflammatory condition of the skin
    find pediatric sick-visit reports for rashes, allergies, eczema, colds, fevers, and two ear infections, all before I was four months old.
  18. consultant
    an expert who gives advice
    I find receipts for lactation and infant-sleep consultants.
  19. compromise
    expose or make liable to danger, suspicion, or disrepute
    She circled a section that explains that RSV is more severe in people with compromised immune systems. I find a photocopy of the first page of an article on SCID from a medical journal.
  20. illegible
    unable to be read
    Her scrawls in the margins are illegible.
  21. diagnosis
    identifying the nature or cause of some phenomenon
    Where are the test results? There must’ve been a fourth immunologist, right? Where’s the diagnosis? Where are the consultations and second opinions?
  22. rifle
    go through in search of something
    I spill other folders to the ground and rifle through them.
  23. flinch
    draw back, as with fear or pain
    Is it possible that I’m not sick? My mind flinches away from this line of thought.
  24. morph
    change shape or undergo a transformation
    Her concern morphs into exasperation and a little pity.
  25. exasperation
    a feeling of annoyance
    Her concern morphs into exasperation and a little pity.
  26. anticipation
    an expectation
    All the emotions I’ve held in check over the past twenty-four hours crash over me. Hope and despair, anticipation and regret, joy and anger. How is it possible to have an emotion and its opposite at the same time?
  27. catastrophic
    extremely harmful; bringing physical or financial ruin
    Her face crumbles, falls completely apart. Whatever structures were holding it up give way in a sudden and catastrophic failure.
  28. fugue
    a dreamlike state of altered consciousness
    My mom walks around in a fugue state. I don’t think she understands what’s happened.
  29. atone
    make amends for
    She seems to realize that she has something to atone for, but she’s not sure exactly what it is.
  30. confirmation
    information that verifies
    And even though I know what he’ll say, I’m dreading the actual medical confirmation.
  31. bacterial
    relating to single-celled microorganisms
    “Your immune system hasn’t been exposed to a lifetime of common viruses and bacterial infections. It hasn’t had time to get experience with fighting these infections. It hasn’t had time to get strong.”
  32. caution
    judiciousness in avoiding harm or danger
    “I don’t think there’s any way to know. I recommend caution.”
  33. delineated
    represented accurately or precisely
    I want her madness clearly delineated so that I can trace its history and my own.
  34. therapist
    a person skilled in a particular type of care
    Dr. Chase tells me that he thinks she needs a therapist.
  35. endure
    face and withstand with courage
    I’m not sure I can endure any more heartbreak.
  36. recount
    narrate or give a detailed account of
    Patient is finally able to recount the night that her husband and son died.
  37. chasm
    a deep opening in the earth's surface
    Even now, thinking about all the years I’ve lost makes me feel like I’m on the lip of an enormous chasm, like I could fall in and never come back out.
  38. insistent
    demanding attention
    She knocks again more insistently, and my resentment rises.
  39. compassion
    a deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering
    I want to lock myself away from her and not have to feel pity or empathy or compassion or anything.
  40. soothing
    freeing from fear and anxiety
    It’s soothing to see an entire world at once—to see the pieces and know how it all fits together.
  41. inviolate
    treated as if holy and kept free from violation or criticism
    I think if I could just find the moment, I could take it apart piece by piece, molecule by molecule, until I got down to the atomic level, until I got to the part that was inviolate and essential.
  42. deliberate
    carefully thought out in advance
    From so high up above it, the world seems ordered and deliberate.
    But I know it’s more than that. And less. It is structured and chaotic. Beautiful and strange.
  43. reconcile
    bring into consonance or accord
    Her doctor’s brain struggles to reconcile what she’s believed for so long against the evidence of too many other doctors, too many tests.
  44. choreograph
    compose a sequence of dance steps, often to music
    The sidewalks teem with people just narrowly missing each other, as if their movements were choreographed.
  45. version
    something a little different from others of the same type
    Maybe there’s a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don’t.
    Maybe there’s a version of my life where I’m sick after all.
    A version where I die in Hawaii.
    Still another where my father and brother are still alive and my mother is not broken.
    There’s even a version of my life without Olly in it.
Created on Thu Aug 24 15:53:53 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Sep 13 09:24:53 EDT 2017)

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