Chapter 2

 She had kissed him back. They must have both fallen asleep for a while, because Trixie woke up with him leaning over her, his lips against her neck. She’d felt her skin burn where he touched her.

 She was jerked back to the present as her father reached for the controls of the heater on the dashboard. “Are you too hot?”

 Trixie shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s okay.” But it wasn’t, not anymore, not by a long shot.

 Daniel fiddled¹ with the knob for another moment. This was the nightmare that sank its teeth into every parent’s neck. Your child is hurt. How quickly can you make it better?

 What if you can’t?

 Beneath the tires, he heard the name that he couldn’t get out of his head, not since the moment he’d found Trixie in the bathroom.

 Who did this to you?

 Jason. Jason Underhill.

 In a tornado² of pure fury, Daniel had grabbed the first thing he could lay hold of - a soap dish - and hurled³ it into the bathroom mirror. Trixie had started shrieking⁴, shaking so hard it took him five minutes to calm her down. He didn’t know who’d been more shocked at the outburst: Trixie, who’d never seen him like this, or Daniel himself, who’d forgotten. After that, he’d been careful which questions he asked his daughter. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to her; he was just afraid to hear her answer, and even more afraid he would again do the wrong thing. He had never learned the protocol⁵ for this. It went beyond comfort; it went beyond parenting. It meant transforming all the rage he felt right now - enough to breathe fire and blow out the windshield – into words that spread like balm, invisible comfort for wounds too broad to see.</p>

<p>Suddenly, Daniel braked hard. The logging truck in front of them was weaving over the median line of the divided highway. “He’s going to kill someone,” Daniel said, and Trixie thought, Let it be me. She felt numb⁷ from the waist down, a mermaid⁸ encased in ice. “Will Mom meet us there?”

 “I hope so, baby.”

 It was after her father had wrapped her in a blanket and rocked her and told her they were going to the hospital, when Trixie was still crying softly for her mother, that her father admitted Laura wasn’t home. But it’s three-thirty in the morning, Trixie had said. Where did she go? There had been a moment where the pain had stopped belonging to Trixie and started to belong to her father instead, but then he’d turned away to get her another blanket, and that was when Trixie realized she wasn’t the only casualty of the night.

 The logging truck veered⁹ sharply to the left. HOW AM i DOING?

 read the bumper¹⁰ sticker on its back door, the one that encouraged motorists to report reckless driving to an 800 number. I am doing fine, Daniel thought. I am hale and whole, and next to me the

 person I love most in this world has broken into a thousand pieces.

 Trixie watched the side of the logging truck as her father accelerated and passed it, holding down his horn. It sounded too loud for this hour of the morning. It seemed to rip the sky in half. She covered her ears, but even then she could still hear it, like a scream that sounded from inside.

 Weaving back into the right-hand lane of the highway, Daniel stole a glance at Trixie across the front seat. She was curled into a ball. Her face was pale. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves. Daniel bet she didn’t even know she was crying.

 She’d forgotten her coat, and Daniel realized this was his fault. He should have reminded her. He should have brought one of his own.

 Trixie could feel the weight of her father’s worry. Who knew that the words you never got around to saying could settle so heavy? Suddenly, she remembered a blown-glass candy dish she had broken when she was eleven, an heirloom that had belonged to her mother’s grandmother. She had gathered all the pieces and had glued them together seamlessly - and she still hadn’t been able to fool her mother. She imagined the same would be true, now, of herself.

 If this had been an ordinary day, Daniel thought, he would have been getting Trixie up for school about now. He’d yell at her when she spent too much time in the bathroom doing her hair and tell her she was going to be late. He’d put a cereal bowl out for her on the breakfast table, and she’d fill it with Life.

 From the moment it was over until the moment she entered her own home, Trixie had said only two words, uttered as she got out of his car. Thank you.

 Daniel watched the logging truck recede¹² in his rearview mirror.

 Danger came in different packages, at different points in a lifetime. There were grapes and marbles and other choking hazards. There were trees too tall for climbing. There were matches and scooters and kitchen knives left lying on the counter. Daniel had obsessed¹⁵ about the day Trixie would be able to drive. He could teach her how to be the most defensive¹⁶ driver on the planet, but he couldn’t vouch¹⁷ for the moron¹⁸ truckers who hadn’t slept for three days, who might run a red light. He couldn’t keep the drunk from having one more before he got behind the wheel of his car to head home.

 Out the passenger window, Trixie watched the scenery stream by without registering a single image. She couldn’t stop wondering:

 If she had not kissed him back, would it never have happened?

 The phone rang ten times in Laura’s office, a room the size of a walk-in closet, but Daniel couldn’t seem to hang up. He had tried everything, everywhere. Laura was not answering the phone in the office; she was not at home; her cell automatically rolled over to the voice message system. She had disconnected herself, on purpose.

 Daniel had made excuses for his wife on his own behalf, but he couldn’t make them for Trixie’s sake. Because for the first time in his life, he didn’t think he could be everything his daughter needed right now.

 He cursed out loud and called Laura’s office again to leave a message. “It’s Daniel. It’s four in the morning. I’ve got Trixie at Stephens Memorial, in the ER. She was . .. she was raped¹⁹ last night.” He hesitated. “Please come.”</p>

<p>Trixie wondered if this was what it felt like to be shot. If, even after the bullet went through flesh and bone, you would look down at yourself with detachment, assessing the damage, as if it wasn’t you who had been hit but someone else you were asked to appraise²⁰. She wondered if numbness²¹ qualified²² as a chronic²³ ache.

 Sitting here, waiting for her father to come back from the restroom, Trixie cataloged her surroundings: the squeak²⁴ of the nurse’s white shoes, the urgent chatter²⁵ of a crash cart being rolled across linoleum²⁶, the underwater-green cinder²⁷ block of the walls and the amoeba shapes of the chairs where they had been told to wait. The smell of linen²⁸ and metal and fear. The garland and stockings hung behind the triage nurse, the afterthought of a Christmas tree that sat next to the wire box holding patient charts. Trixie didn’t just notice all these things, she absorbed them, and she decided²⁹ she was saturating³⁰ herself with sensation to make up for the thirty minutes she had blocked out of her consciousness.

 She realized, with a start, that she had already begun to divide her life into before and after.

 Hi, you’ve reached Laura Stone, her voice said. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.

 Leave me.

 I’ll get back to you.

 Daniel hung up again and walked back inside the hospital, where cell phones were prohibited. But when he got back to the waiting area, Trixie was gone. He approached the triage nurse. “Which room is my daughter in? Trixie Stone?”

 The nurse glanced up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stone. I know she’s a priority case, but we’re short staffed and . . .”

 “She hasn’t been called in yet?” Daniel said. “Then where is she?” He knew he shouldn’t have left her alone, knew even as she was nodding at him when she asked if she’d be all right by herself for a moment that she hadn’t heard him at all. Backing away from the horseshoe desk, he started through the double doors of the ER, calling Trixie’s name.

 “Sir,” the nurse said, getting to her feet, “you can’t go in there!”

 “Trixie?” Daniel yelled, as patients stared at him from the spaces between privacy curtains, their faces pale or bloodied³² or weak. “Trixie!”

 An orderly grabbed his arm; he shook the massive man off. He turned a corner, smacking³³ into a resident in her ghost-white coat before he came to a dead end. Whirling about, he continued to call out for Trixie, and then - in the interstitial space between the letters of her name - he heard Trixie calling for him.

 He followed the thread of her voice through the maze³⁵ of corridors and finally saw her. “I’m right here,” he said, and she turned to him and burst into tears.

 “I got lost,” she sobbed³⁶ against his chest. “I couldn’t breathe. They were staring.”

 “Who was?”

 “All the people in the waiting room. They were wondering what was wrong with me.”

 Daniel took both of her hands. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, that first lie a fissure³⁸ crack in his heart.

 A woman wearing a trowel’s layer of cosmetics³⁹ approached.

 “Trixie Stone?” she said. “My name’s Janice. I’m a sexual assault advocate. I’m here to answer questions for you and your family, and to help you understand what’s going to be happening.”

 Daniel couldn’t get past the makeup⁴⁰. If this woman had been called in for Trixie, how much time had been lost applying those false eyelashes, that glittery blush? How much faster might she have come?

 “First things first,” Janice said, her eyes on Trixie. “This wasn’t your fault.”

 Trixie glanced at her. “You don’t even know what happened.”

 “I know that no one deserves to be raped, no matter who she is and what she’s been doing,” Janice said. “Have you taken a shower yet?”

 Daniel wondered how on earth she could even think this. Trixie was still wearing the same torn blouse, had the same raccoon circles of mascara under her eyes. She had wanted to shower – that was why, when he’d found her, she was in the bathroom - but Daniel knew enough to keep her from doing it. Evidence. The word had swum in his mind like a shark.

 “What about the police?” Daniel heard, and he was stunned⁴¹ to realize he’d been the one to say it.

 Janice turned. “The hospital automatically reports any sexual assault of a minor⁴² to the police,” she said. “Whether or not Trixie wants to press charges is up to her.”

 She will press charges against that son of a bitch, Daniel thought, even if I have to talk her into it.

 And on the heels of that: If he forced Trixie to do something she didn’t want to, then how was he any different from Jason Underhill?

 As Janice outlined the specifics of the upcoming examination, Trixie shook her head and folded her arms around herself. “I want to go home,” she said, in the smallest of voices. “I’ve changed my mind.”

 “You need to see a doctor, Trixie. I’ll stay with you, the whole time.” She turned to Daniel. “Is there a Mrs. Stone . . . ?

 “Excellent question, Daniel thought, before he could remember not to. “She’s on her way,” he said. Maybe this was not even a lie by now.

 Trixie grabbed onto his arm. “What about my father? Can he come in with me?”

 Janice looked from Daniel to Trixie and then back again. “It’s a pelvic exam,” she said delicately.

 The last time Daniel had seen Trixie naked, she had been eleven and about to take a bubble bath. He had walked into the bathroom, thinking she was only brushing her teeth, and together they had stared at her blossoming body in the reflection of the mirror.

 After that, he was careful to knock on doors, to draw an invisible curtain of distance around her for privacy.</p>

When he was a kid in Alaska, he had met Yu’pik Eskimos who hated him on sight, because he was a kass’aq. It didn’t matter that he was six or seven, that he hadn’t been the particular Caucasian who had cheated that person out of land or reneged on a job or any of a hundred other grievances⁴³.All they saw was that Daniel was white, and by association, he was a magnet for their anger. He imagined, now, what it would be like to be the only male in the room during a sexual assault examination.

“Please, Daddy?”

Behind the fear in Trixie’s eyes was the understanding that even with this stranger, she would be alone, and she couldn’t risk that again. So Daniel took a deep breath and headed down the hall between Trixie and Janice. Inside the room, there was a gurney; he helped Trixie climb onto it. The doctor entered almost immediately, a small woman wearing scrubs and a white coat. “Hi, Trixie,” she said, and if she seemed surprised to see a father in the room, instead of a mother, she said nothing. She came right up to Trixie and squeezed her hand. “You’re already being very brave. All I’m going to ask you to do is keep that up.”

She handed a form to Daniel and asked him to sign it, explaining that because Trixie was a minor, a parent or guardian⁴⁵ had to authorize⁴⁶ the collection and release of information. She took Trixie’s blood pressure and pulse and made notes on her clipboard. Then she began to ask Trixie a series of questions.

What’s your address?

How old are you?

What day did the assault occur? What approximate time?

What was the gender⁴⁷ of the perpetrator? The number of perpetrators?

Daniel felt a line of sweat break out under the collar of his shirt.

Have you douched, bathed, urinated, defecated since the assault?

Have you vomited⁴⁸, eaten or drunk, changed clothes, brushed your teeth?

He watched Trixie shake her head no to each of these. Each time before she spoke⁴⁹, she would glance at Daniel, as if he had the answer in his eyes.

Have you had consensual intercourse⁵⁰ in the last five days?

Trixie froze, and this time, her gaze slid away from his. She murmured something inaudible. “Sorry,” the doctor said. “I didn’t quite get that?”

“This was the first time,” Trixie repeated.

Daniel felt the room swell⁵¹ and burst. He was vaguely⁵² aware of excusing himself, of Trixie’s face - a white oval that bled at the edges. He had to try twice before he could maneuver⁵³ his fingers in a way that would open the latch⁵⁴ of the door.

Outside, he balled his hand into a fist and struck it against the cinder-block wall. He pummeled the cement again and again. He did this even as the tears came and a nurse led him away, to wash the blood off his knuckles⁵⁵ and to bandage the scrapes on his palm.

He did this until he knew Trixie wasn’t the only one hurting. Trixie wasn’t where everyone thought she was. She might have physically⁵⁶ been in the examination room, but mentally she was floating, hovering⁵⁷ in the top left corner of the ceiling, watching the doctor and that other woman minister to the poor, sad, broken girl who used to be her.

She wondered if they knew that their patient was a husk, a shell left behind by a snail⁵⁸ because home didn’t fit anymore.

You’d think someone who’d been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside. Trixie watched herself step onto a sheet of white paper with stiff, jerky movements. She listened as Dr. Roth asked her to remove her clothes, explaining that there might be evidence on the fabric⁵⁹ that the detectives could use. “Will I get them back?” Trixie heard herself say. “I’m afraid not,” the doctor answered.

“Your dad is going to run home and get you something to wear,” Janice added.

Trixie stared down at her mothers sheer blouse. She’s going to kill me, Trixie thought, and then she almost laughed - would her mother really be paying attention to the freaking blouse when she found out what had happened? With slow movements, Trixie mechanically unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it off. Too late, she remembered the Ace¹¹ bandage around her wrist.

“What happened there?” Dr. Roth asked, gently touching⁶⁰ the metal pins holding the wrap in place.

Trixie panicked. What would the doctor say if she knew Trixie had taken to carving⁶¹ her own arm up? Could she get thrown into a psych ward⁶² for that?

“Trixie,” Dr. Roth said, “are there bruises⁶³ under there?” She looked down at her feet. “They’re more like cuts.” When Dr. Roth

began to unravel⁶⁴ the bandage on her left wrist, Trixie didn’t fight her. She thought about what it would be like in an institution. If, in the aftermath of all this, it might not be such a bad thing to be sealed away from the real world and totally overmedicated.

Dr. Roth’s gloved hands skimmed over a cut, one so new that Trixie could see the skin still knitting together. “Did he use a knife?”

Trixie blinked. She was still so disconnected from her body that it took her a moment to understand what the doctor was implying, and another moment after that to understand that she had just been given a way out.

“I... I don’t think so,” Trixie said. “I think he scratched me when I was fighting.”

Dr. Roth wrote something down on her clipboard, as Trixie kept getting undressed. Her jeans came next, and then she stood shivering in her bra and panties. “Were you wearing that pair of underwear when it happened?” the doctor asked.

Trixie shook her head. She’d put them on, along with a big fat sanitary⁶⁵ napkin, once she saw that she was bleeding. “I wasn’t wearing underwear,” Trixie murmured, and immediately she realized how much that made her sound like a slut. She glanced down at the floor, at the see-through blouse. Was that why it had happened?

“Low-rise jeans,” Janice commiserated⁶⁶, and Trixie nodded, grateful that she hadn’t been the one to have to explain.

Trixie couldn’t remember ever being so tired. The examination room was runny at the edges, like a breakfast egg that hadn’t been cooked quite long enough. Janice handed her a hospital johnny, which was just as good as being naked with the way it was hanging open in the back. “You can take a seat,” Dr. Roth said.

The blood samples were next. It was just like when they’d had to pair up in eighth-grade science to try to analyze⁶⁷ their own blood type. Trixie had nearly passed out at the sight of the blood, and her teacher had sent her to the nurse to breathe into a paper bag for a half hour, and she was so mortified⁶⁸ that she’d called her father and said she was sick even though physically she was feeling much better. She and her father had had a Monopoly tournament, and like always, Trixie bought Park Place and Boardwalk and set up hotels and creamed her father.

This time, though, when the needle went in, Trixie watched from above. She didn’t feel the prick⁶⁹, she didn’t feel woozy. She didn’t feel anything at all, of course, because it wasn’t her.

When Dr. Roth turned off the lights in the room, Janice stepped forward. “The doctor’s going to use a special light now, a Woods lamp. It won’t hurt.”

It could have been a thousand needles - Trixie knew she still wouldn’t feel it. But instead, this turned out to be like a tanning booth, except creepier. The light glowed ultraviolet, and when Trixie glanced down at her own bare body, it was covered with purple lines and blotches⁷⁰ that hadn’t been visible before. Dr. Roth moistened a long cotton swab and touched it to a spot on her shoulder. She left it on the counter to air-dry, and as it did, Trixie watched her write on the paper sleeve that the swab had been packaged in:

Suspected saliva⁷¹ from right shoulder.

The doctor took swabs from the inside of her cheek and off her tongue. She gently combed Trixie’s hair over a paper towel, folding up the comb inside the towel when she was finished. Dr. Roth slipped another towel underneath⁷² her, using a different comb to work through her pubic hair. Trixie had to turn away - it was that embarrassing to watch.

“Almost done,” Janice murmured.

Dr. Roth pulled a pair of stirrups from the end of the examination table. “Have you ever been to a gynecologist, Trixie?”she asked.

Trixie had an appointment, scheduled for next February, with her mother’s doctor. It’s a health thing, her mother had assured her, which was just fine because Trixie wasn’t planning on discussing her sex life out loud, especially not with her mother.

Months ago, when the appointment had been made, Trixie hadn’t even ever kissed a guy.

“You’re going to feel a little pressure,” Dr. Roth said, folding Trixie’s legs into the stirrups, a human origami that left her stark⁷³ and open.

In that instant, Trixie felt what was left of her spirit sinking down from where it had been watching near the ceiling, to take dark root in her beaten body. She could feel Janice’s hand stroking her arm, could feel the doctor’s rubber glove parting the heart of her. For the first time since she’d entered the hospital, she was completely, violently aware of who she was and what had been done to her.

There was cold steel, and a rasp of flesh. A push from the outside, as her body struggled to keep the speculum out. Trixie

tried to kick out with one foot, but she was being held down at the thighs⁷⁴ and then there was pain and force and you are breaking me in two.

“Trixie,” Janice said fiercely. “Trixie, honey, stop fighting.

It’s okay. It’s just the doctor.”

Suddenly the door burst open and Trixie saw her mother, lion-eyed and determined⁷⁵. “Trixie,” Laura said, two syllables⁷⁶ that broke in the center.

Now that Trixie could feel, she wished she couldn’t. The only thing worse than not feeling anything was feeling everything. She started shaking uncontrollably, an atom about to split beneath its own compounded weight; and then she found herself anchored in her mother’s embrace, their hearts beating hard against each other as the doctor and Janice offered to give them a moment of privacy.

“Where were you?” Trixie cried, an accusation⁷⁷ and a question all at once. She started to sob³⁷ so hard she could not catch her breath.

Laura’s hands were on the back of Trixie’s neck, in her hair, around the bound of her ribs⁷⁸. “I should have been home,” her mother said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Trixie wasn’t sure if her mother was apologizing, or just acknowledging her own errors. She should have been home. Maybe then Trixie wouldn’t have chanced lying about going to Zephyr⁷⁹’s; maybe she never would have had the opportunity to steal the sheer blouse. Maybe she would have spent the night in her own bed. Maybe the worst hurt she would have had to nurse was another razor stripe, a self-inflicted wound.

Her anger surprised her. Maybe none of this had been her mother’s fault, but Trixie pretended it was. Because a mother was supposed to protect her child. Because if Trixie was angry, there was no room left for being scared. Because if it was her mothers mistake, then it couldn’t be hers.

Laura folded her arms around Trixie so tight that there was no room for doubt between them. “We’ll get through this,” she promised. “I know,” Trixie answered.

They were both lying, and Trixie thought maybe that was the way it would be, now. In the wake of a disaster, the last thing you needed to do was set off another bomb; instead, you walked through the rubble⁸⁰ and told yourself that it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked. Trixie bit down on her lip. After tonight, she couldn’t be a kid anymore. After tonight, there was no more room in her life for honesty.

Daniel was supremely⁸¹ grateful to have been given a job. “She needs a change of clothes,” Janice had said. He was worried about not getting back in time before Trixie was ready, but Janice

promised that they would be a while yet.

He drove back home from the hospital as quickly as he’d driven to it, just in case.

By the time he reached Bethel, morning had cracked wide open.

He drove by the hockey rink and watched it belch⁸² out a steady stream of tiny Mites⁸³, each followed by a parent-Sherpa lugging⁸⁴ an outsized gear bag. He passed an old man skating down the ice of his driveway in his bedroom slippers⁸⁶, out to grab the newspaper.

He wove around the parked rigs of hunters culling⁸⁷ the woods for winter deer.

His own house had been left unlocked in the hurry to leave it. The light on the stove hood⁸⁸ - the one he’d kept on last night in case Laura came home late - was still burning, although there was enough sunshine to flood the entire kitchen. Daniel turned it off and then headed upstairs to Trixie’s room.

Years ago, when she’d told him she wanted to fly like the men and women in his comic book drawings, he had given her a sky in which to do it. Trixie’s walls and ceiling were covered with clouds; the hardwood floors were an ethereal cirrus swirl⁸⁹.

Somehow, as Trixie got older, she hadn’t outgrown⁹⁰ the murals. They seemed to compliment her, a girl too vibrant⁹¹ to be contained by walls. But right now, the clouds that had once seemed so liberating⁹² made Daniel feel like he was falling. He anchored himself by holding on to the furniture, weaving from bed to dresser to closet.

He tried to remember what Trixie liked to wear on weekends when it was snowing, when the single event on the docket was to read the Sunday paper and doze⁹³ on the couch, but the only outfit⁹⁴ he could picture was the one she had been dressed in when he’d found her last night. Gilding⁹⁵ the lily, that’s what Laura had called it when Trixie and Zephyr got into her makeup drawer as kids and then paraded downstairs looking like the worst prostitutes in the Combat Zone. Once, he remembered, they’d come with their mouths pale as corpses⁹⁷ and asked Laura why she had white lipstick⁹⁸. That’s not lipstick, she’d said, laughing, that’s concealer. It hides zits and dark circles, all the things you don’t want people to see. Trixie had only shaken her head: But why wouldn’t you want people to see your lips?

Daniel opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a bell-sleeved shirt that was tiny enough to have fit Trixie when she was eight.

Had she ever worn this in public?

He sank down onto the floor, holding the shirt, wondering if all this had been his own fault. He’d forbidden Trixie to buy certain clothes, like the pants she had had on last night, in fact, and that she must have purchased and hidden from him. You saw outfits⁹⁹ like those in fashion magazines, outfits so revealing they bordered on porn, in Daniel’s opinion. Women glanced at those photo spreads and wished they looked that way, men glanced at them and wished for women who looked that way, and the sad reality was that most of those models were not women at all, but girls about Trixie’s age. Girls who might wear something to a party thinking it was sexy, without considering what it would mean if a guy thought that too.

He had assumed that a kid who slept with stuffed animals would not also be wearing a thong¹⁰⁰, but now it occurred to Daniel that long before any comic book penciler had conceived of Copycat or The Changeling or Mystique, shape-shifters existed in the form of teenage girls. One minute you might find your daughter borrowing a cookie sheet to go sledding in the backyard, and the next she’d be online IMing a boy. One minute she’d lean over to kiss you good night, the next she’d tell you she hated you and couldn’t wait to go away to college. One minute she’d be putting on her mother’s makeup, the next she’d be buying her own. Trixie had morphed back and forth¹⁰¹ between childhood and adolescence¹⁰² so easily that the line between them had gone blurry¹⁰³, so indistinct that Daniel had simply given up trying for a clearer vision.

He dug way into the back of one of Trixie’s drawers and pulled out a pair of shapeless fleece sweatpants, then a long-sleeved pink T-shirt. With his eyes closed, he fished in her underwear drawer for panties and a bra. As he hurried back to the hospital, he remembered a game he and Trixie used to play when they were stuck in traffic at the Maine tolls¹⁰⁴, trying to come up with a superhero power for every letter of the alphabet. Amphibious, bulletproof, clairvoyant¹⁰⁵. Danger sensitive, electromagnetic.

Flight. Glow-in-the-dark. Heat vision. Invincibility¹⁰⁶. Jumping over tall buildings. Kevlar skin. Laser sight. Mind control. Never-ending life. Omniscience¹⁰⁷. Pyrokinesis. Quick reflexes. Regeneration. Superhuman strength. Telepathy. Underwater breathing. Vanishing. Weather control. X-ray vision.

Yelling loud. Zero gravity.

Nowhere in that list was the power to keep your child from growing up. If a superhero couldn’t do it, how could any ordinary man?

There was a knock on the examination room door. “It’s Daniel Stone,” Laura heard. “I, um, have Trixie’s clothes.”

Before Janice could reach the door, Laura opened it. She took in Daniel’s disheveled hair, the shadow of beard on his face, the storm behind his eyes, and thought for a moment she had fallen backward fifteen years.

“You’re here,” he said.

“I got the message on my cell.” She took the stack of clothing from his hands and carried it over to Trixie. “I’m just going to talk to Daddy for a minute,” Laura said, and as she moved away, Janice stepped forward to take her place.

Daniel was waiting outside the door for Laura. “Jason did this?” she turned to him, fever in her eyes. “I want him caught. I want him punished.”

“Take a number.” Daniel ran a hand down his face. “How is she?”

“Nearly finished.” Laura leaned against the wall beside him, a foot of space separating them.

“But how is she?” Daniel repeated.

“Lucky. The doctor said there wasn’t any internal injury.”

“Wasn’t she . . . she was bleeding.”

“Only a tiny bit. It’s stopped now.” Laura glanced up at Daniel. “You never told me she was sleeping at Zephyr’s last night.”

“She got invited after you left.”

“Did you call Zephyr’s mother to . . .”

“No,” Daniel interrupted. “And you wouldn’t have, either. She’s gone to Zephyr’s a hundred times before.” His eyes flashed. “If you’re going to accuse me of something, Laura, just do it.”

“I’m not accusing you”

“People in glass houses,” Daniel murmured.

“What?”

 

He moved away from the wall and approached her, backing her into a corner. “Why didn’t you answer when I called your office?”

Excuses rose inside Laura like bubbles: I was in the restroom.

I had taken a sleeping pill. I accidentally turned the ringer off. “I don’t think now is the time . . .”

“If this isn’t the time,” Daniel said, his voice aching, “maybe you could give me a number at least. A place I can reach you, you know, in case Trixie gets raped again.”

Laura stood perfectly¹⁰⁸ still, immobilized by equal parts shame and anger. She thought of the deepest level of hell, the lake of ice that only froze harder the more you tried to work yourself free.

“Excuse me?”

Grateful for a distraction¹⁰⁹, Laura turned toward the voice. A tall, sad-eyed man with sandy hair stood behind her, a man who’d most likely heard every word between her and Daniel. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt. I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Stone?”

“That’s us,” Laura said. In name, at least.

The man held out a badge. “I’m Detective Mike Bartholemew. And I’d really like to speak to your daughter.”

Daniel had been inside the Bethel police station only once, when he’d chaperoned Trixie’s second-grade class there on a field trip. He remembered the quilt that hung in the lobby, stars sewn to spell out PROTECT AND SERVE, and the booking room, where the whole class had taken a collective grinning mug shot. He had not seen the conference room until this morning - a small, gray cubicle¹¹⁰ with a reverse mirrored window that some idiot contractor¹¹¹ had put in backward, so that from inside, Daniel could see the traffic of cops in the hallway checking their reflections.

He focused on the winding¹¹² wheels of the tape recorder. It was easier than concentrating on the words coming out of Trixie’s mouth, an exhaustive description of the previous night. She had already explained how, when she left home, she changed into a different outfit. How there was a posse of players from the hockey team

present when she arrived at Zephyr’s, and how, by the end of the evening, it was only the four of them.

One parent was allowed in with Trixie when she gave her statement. Because Laura had been at the hospital exam - or maybe because of what Daniel had said to her in the hall - she had decided that he should be the one to go. It was only after he was inside that he realized this was more of a trial than an advantage. He had to sit very still and listen to Trixie’s story in excruciating detail, smiling at her in encouragement and telling her she was doing great, when what he really wanted was to grab the detective and ask him why the hell he hadn’t locked up Jason Underhill yet.

He wondered how, in just an hour’s time, he’d regressed back to being the kind of person he’d been a lifetime ago - someone for whom feeling came before thought, for whom reason was a postscript¹¹³. He wondered if this happened to all fathers: as their daughters grew up, they slid backward.

Bartholemew had brewed¹¹⁴ coffee. He’d brought in a box of tissues, which he put near Trixie, just in case. Daniel liked thinking that Bartholemew had been through this before. He liked knowing that someone had.

“What were you drinking?” the detective asked Trixie.

She was wearing the pink shirt and sweatpants that Daniel had brought, plus his coat. He’d forgotten to bring hers back, even when he went home again. “Coke,” Trixie said. “With rum.”

“Were you using any drugs?”

She looked down at the table and shook her head.

“Trixie,” the detective said. “You’re going to have to speak up.”

“No,” she answered.

“What happened next?”

Daniel listened to her describe a girl he didn’t know, one who lap-danced and played strip poker¹¹⁵. Her voice flattened¹¹⁶ under the weight of her bad judgment¹¹⁷. “After Zephyr went upstairs with Moss¹¹⁸, I figured everyone was gone. I was going to go home, but I wanted to sit down for a minute, because I had a really bad headache. And it turned out Jason hadn’t left. He said he wanted to make sure I was all right. I started to cry.”

“Why?”

Her face contorted. “Because we broke up a couple of weeks ago.

And being that close to him again ... it hurt.”

Daniel’s head snapped up. “Broke up?”

Trixie turned at the same time the detective stopped the tape.

“Mr. Stone,” Bartholemew said, “I’m going to have to ask you to remain silent.” He nodded at Trixie to continue.

She let her gaze slide beneath the table. “We . .. we wound up kissing. I fell asleep for a little while, I guess, because when I woke up, we weren’t near the bathroom anymore ... we were on the carpet in the living room. I don’t remember how we got there. That was when he ... when he raped me.”

The last drink that Daniel had had was in 1991, the day before he convinced Laura that he was worth marrying. But before that, he’d had plenty of firsthand knowledge about the faulty reasoning and slurred¹¹⁹ decisions that swam at the bottom of a bottle. He’d had his share of mornings where he woke up in a house he could not recall arriving at. Trixie might not remember how she got into the living room, but Daniel could tell her exactly how it had happened.

Detective Bartholemew looked squarely at Trixie. “I know this is going to be difficult,” he said, “but I need you to tell me exactly what happened between you two. Like whether either of you removed any clothing. Or what parts of your body he touched. What you said to him and what he said to you. Things like that.”

Trixie fiddled with the zipper¹²⁰ of Daniel’s battered¹²¹ leather jacket. “He tried to take off my shirt, but I didn’t want him to.

I told him that it was Zephyrs¹²² house and that I didn’t feel right fooling around there. He said I was breaking his heart. I felt bad after that, so I let him unhook my bra and touch me, you know. . .my breasts. He was kissing me the whole time, and that was the good part, the part I wanted, but then he put his hand down my pants. I tried to pull his hand away, but he was too strong.” Trixie swallowed. “He said, ‘Don’t tell me you don’t want this.’ “Daniel gripped the edge of the table so hard that he thought he would crack the plastic. He took a deep breath in through his mouth and held it. He thought of all the ways it would be possible to kill Jason Underhill.

“I tried to get away, but he’s bigger than I am, and he pushed me down again. It was like a game to him. He held my hands up over my head and he pulled down my pants. I said I wanted him to stop and he didn’t. And then,” Trixie said, stumbling over the words. “And then he pushed me down hard and he raped me.”

There was a bullet, Daniel thought, but that would be too easy.

“Had you ever had sex before?”

Trixie glanced at Daniel. “No,” she answered. “I started screaming, because it hurt so much. I tried to kick him. But when

I did, it hurt more, so I just stayed still and waited for it to be over.”

Drowning, Daniel thought. Slowly. In a sewer¹²³.

“Did your friend hear you screaming?” Detective Bartholemew asked.

“I guess not,” Trixie said. “There was music on, pretty loud.”

No . . . a rusty¹²⁴ knife. A sharp cut to the gut¹²⁵. Daniel had read about men who’d had to live for days, watching their insides being eaten out by infection. “Did he use a condom?”

Trixie shook her head. “He pulled out before he finished. There was blood on the carpet, and on me, too. He was worried about that. He said he didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Maybe, Daniel mused¹²⁶, he would do all of these things to Jason Underhill. Twice.

“He got up and found a roll of paper towels so I could clean myself up. Then he took some rug cleaner from under the kitchen sink, and he scrubbed the spot on the carpet. He said we were lucky

it wasn’t ruined.”

And what about Trixie? What magical solution would take away the stain he’d left on her forever? “Mr. Stone?”

Daniel blinked, and he realized that he had become someone else for a moment - someone he hadn’t been for years - and that the detective had been speaking to him. “Sorry.”

“Could I see you outside?”

He followed Bartholemew into the hallway of the police station.

“Look,” the detective said, “I see this kind of thing a lot.”

This was news to Daniel. The last rape¹³ he could remember in their small town happened over a decade ago and was perpetrated by a hitch-hiker.

“A lot of girls think they’re ready to have sex . .. but then change their mind, after the fact.”

It took Daniel a minute to find his voice. “Are you saying ... that my daughter’s lying?”

“No. But I want you to understand that even if Trixie is willing to testify, you might not get the outcome you’re hoping for.”

 “She’s fourteen, for God’s sake,” Daniel said. “Kids younger than that are having sex. And according to the medical report, there wasn’t significant internal trauma¹²⁷.”

“She wasn’t hurt enough?”

“I’m just saying that given the details - the alcohol, the strip poker, the former relationship with Jason - rape could be a hard sell to a jury. The boy’s going to say it was consensual.”

Daniel clenched¹²⁸ his jaw¹²⁹. “If a murder suspect told you he was innocent, would you just let him walk away?”

“It’s not quite the same”

“No, it’s not. Because the murder victim’s dead and can’t give you any information about what really happened. As opposed to my daughter, the one who’s inside there telling you exactly how she was raped, while you aren’t fucking listening to her.” He opened the door to the conference room to see Trixie with her arms folded on the table, her head resting on her hands.

“Can we go home?” she asked, groggy¹³⁰.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “The detective can call us if he needs anything else.” He anchored his arm around Trixie. They were halfway¹³¹ down the hall when Daniel turned around again to face Bartholemew. In the reflection of the backward mirror, he could see their faces, white ovals that hovered¹³² like ghosts. “You have any kids?” he asked.

The detective hesitated, then shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” Daniel said, and shepherded Trixie through the door.

At home, Laura stripped the sheets off Trixie’s bed and remade it with fresh ones. She found a plaid flannel¹³³ quilt in the cedar¹³⁴ chest in the attic¹³⁵ and used that, instead of Trixie’s usual quilt.

She picked up the clothes that were tossed on the floor and straightened the books on the nightstand and tried to turn the room into something that would not remind Trixie of yesterday.

At the last minute, Laura walked toward a shelf and pulled down the stuffed moose that Trixie had slept with until she was ten.

Bald in some spots and missing one eye, it had been retired¹³⁶, but Trixie hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to put it into a garage sale pile. Laura settled this squarely between the pillows, as if it might be just that easy to take Trixie back to childhood.

Then she hauled the laundry downstairs and began to stir it into the washing machine. It was while she was waiting for the barrel to fill with water that she spilled bleach¹³⁷ on her skirt, one of her work skirts, part of an expensive suit. Laura watched the color leach¹³⁸ from the wool, a scar in the shape of a tear. She swore, then tried to reverse the damage by holding the hem⁶ of the skirt under running water in the sink. Finally, defeated, she sank down in front of the humming belly¹³⁹ of the Kenmore and burst into tears.

Had she been so busy keeping her own secret that she didn’t have the time or the inclination¹⁴⁰ to dissolve Trixie’s? What if, instead of seeing Seth, Laura had been here every night? What if she’d quizzed her on her French vocabulary, or carried a cup of hot chocolate to her room, or invited her to sit on the couch and make fun of the hairstyles on an old sitcom¹⁴¹? What if Laura had given Trixie a reason to stay home?

She knew, on some level, that it would not have worked that way. Just because Laura felt like playing ubermother did not mean Trixie would choose to join the game: At her age, a mother’s touch couldn’t compare to the brush of a boy’s hand down the valley of your spine¹⁴². Laura forced herself to picture Jason Underhill’s face. He was a goodlooking boy - a tangle¹⁴³ of black hair, aquamarine eyes, an athlete’s body. Everyone in Bethel knew him. Even Laura, who wasn’t a devotee of hockey, had seen Jason’s name splashed all over the sports pages of the newspaper. When Daniel had worried about an older boy dating Trixie, Laura had been the one to tell him to relax. She saw kids nearly that age every single day, and she knew that Jason was a catch. He was smart, polite, and crazy about Trixie, she’d told Daniel. What more could you want for your daughter’s first crush?

But now, when she thought of Jason Underhill, she considered how persuasive¹⁴⁴ those blue eyes might be. How strong an athlete was. She started to twist her thinking, boring it deep as a screw, so that it would truly take hold.

If all the blame could be pinned on Jason Underhill, then it wasn’t Laura’s fault.

Trixie had been awake now for twenty-eight hours straight. Her eyes burned, and her head was too heavy, and her throat was coated with the residue¹⁴⁵ of the story she’d been telling over and over.

Dr. Roth had given her a prescription¹⁴⁶ for Xanax, telling her that no matter how exhausted¹⁴⁷ Trixie was, she was most likely going to find it difficult to sleep, and that this was perfectly normal.

She had, finally, wonderfully, been able to take a shower. She stayed in long enough to use an entire bar of soap. She had tried to scrub down there, but she couldn’t get all the way inside where she still felt dirty. When the doctor had said there was no internal trauma, Trixie had nearly asked her to check again. For a moment, she’d wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing, if it had never really happened.

“Hey,” her father said, poking¹⁴⁸ his head into her bedroom door.

“You ought to be in bed.”

Trixie pulled back the covers - her mother had changed her sheets - and crawled inside. Before, getting into bed had been the highlight of her day; she’d always imagined it like some kind of cloud or gentle nest where she could just let go of all the stress of acting¹⁴⁹ cool and looking perfect and saying the right things.

But now, it loomed¹⁵⁰ like a torture device, a place where she’d close her eyes and have to replay what had happened over and over, like a closed-circuit TV.

Her mother had left her old stuffed moose on top of the pillows. Trixie squeezed it against her chest. “Daddy?” she asked.

“Can you tuck me in?”

He had to work at it, but he managed to smile. “Sure.”

When Trixie was little, her father had always left her a riddle¹⁵¹ to fall asleep on, and then he’d give her the answer at breakfast.

What gets bigger the more you take away from it? A hole. What’s black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away? Charcoal¹⁵².

“Could you maybe talk to me for a little while?” Trixie asked.

It wasn’t that she wanted to talk, really. It was that she didn’t want to be left alone in this room with only herself for company.

Trixie’s father smoothed back her hair. “Don’t tell me you’re not exhausted.”

Don’t tell me you don’t want this, Jason had said.

She suddenly remembered one of her father’s nighttime riddles¹⁵³:

The answer is yes, but what I mean is no. What is the question?

And the solution: Do you mind?

Her father notched¹⁵⁴ the covers beneath her chin. “I’ll send Mom in to say good night,” he promised, and he reached over to turn off the lamp.

“Leave it on,” Trixie said, panicking. “Please.”

He stopped abruptly¹⁵⁵, his hand hovering in the air. Trixie stared at the bulb, until she couldn’t see anything but the kind of brilliant light everyone says comes for you when you’re about to die.

The absolute worst job, if you asked Mike Bartholemew, was having to go tell a parent that his or her kid had been in a fatal car crash or had committed suicide or OD’d. There just weren’t words to hold up that kind of pain, and the recipient¹⁵⁶ of the news would stand there, staring at him, certain she’d heard wrong. The second absolute worst job, in his opinion, was dealing¹⁵⁷ with rape victims. He couldn’t listen to any of their statements without feeling guilty for sharing the same gender as the perp. And even if he could collect enough evidence to merit a trial, and even if there was a conviction, you could bet it wouldn’t be for very long. In most cases, the victim was still in therapy when the rapist got done serving his sentence.

The thing that most people didn’t understand, if they weren’t in his line of work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone, forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.

He climbed the stairs over the smoothie bar to the interim¹⁵⁸ apartment he’d rented after the divorce, the one he swore he’d live in for only six months but that had turned out to be his home for six years. It wasn’t furnished - the less appealing it was, the easier Mike figured it would be to get motivated to leave it - but he had a futon that he usually left open as a bed, and a beanbag chair and a TV that he left running 24/7 so that Ernestine would have something to listen to when he was at work.

“Ernie?” he called out as soon as his keys turned in the lock.

“I’m back.”

She wasn’t on the futon, where he’d left her when the call came in this morning. Mike stripped off his tie and walked toward the bathroom. He drew back the shower curtain to find the potbellied pig asleep in the bottom of the tub. “Miss me?” he asked.

The pig opened one eye and grunted¹⁵⁹.

“You know, the only reason I came home was to take you for a walk,” Mike said, but the pig had fallen back asleep.

He had a warrant in his pocket - Trixie’s statement, plus the presence of semen, was enough probable cause to arrest Jason Underhill. He even knew where the kid was, just like everyone in the town who was following the high school hockey team’s stellar exploits. But he had to come home first to let Ernie out. At least that’s what he’d told himself.

Do you have any kids? Daniel Stone had asked.

Mike turned off the television and sat in silence for a few moments. Then he went to the one closet in the apartment and pulled down a cardboard box.

Inside the box was a pillow from Mike’s daughter’s bed, one that he’d stuffed into an enormous plastic evidence bag. He broke the ziplocked seal and inhaled¹⁶⁰ deeply. It hardly smelled like her anymore at all, in spite of the great care he had taken.

Suddenly, Ernestine came running. She skidded¹⁶¹ across the floor, scrambling¹⁶² over to the futon where Mike sat. Her snout went into the plastic bag with the pillow, and Mike wondered if she could scent¹⁶³ something he couldn’t. The pig looked up at Mike.

“I know,” he said. “I miss her, too.”

Daniel sat in the kitchen with a bottle of sherry in front of him. He hated sherry, but it was the only liquid with alcoholic¹⁶⁴ content in this house right now. He had already burned through half the bottle, and it was a large one, something Laura liked to use when she made stir-fry chicken. He didn’t feel drunk, though. He only felt like a failure.

Fatherhood was the entire foundation Daniel had reinvented himself upon. When he thought about being a parent, he saw a baby’s hand spread like a star on his chest. He saw the tightness between the kite and the spool¹⁶⁵ of string that held it. Finding out that he’d fallen short of his responsibility for protecting his daughter made him wonder how he’d gone so long fooling himself into believing he had truly changed.

The part of himself that he’d thought he’d exorcised turned out to have been only lying in the shallow grave where old personalities¹⁶⁶ went to be discarded. With the sherry lighting¹⁶⁷ his way, Daniel could see that now. He could feel anger building like steam.

The new Daniel, the father Daniel, had answered the detective’s questions and trusted the police to do what they were supposed to, because that was the best way to ensure the safety of his child.

But the old Daniel... well, he never would have trusted anyone else to complete a job that rightfully belonged to him. He would have fought back in revenge, kicking and screaming. In fact, he often had.

Daniel stood up and shrugged¹⁶⁸ on his jacket just as Laura walked into the kitchen. She took one look at the bottle of sherry on the table, and then at him. “You don’t drink.” Daniel stared at her. “Didn’t,” he corrected. “Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t owe her an explanation. He didn’t owe anyone anything. This was not about payment, it was about payback.

Daniel opened the door and hurried out to his truck. Jason Underhill would be at the town rink, right now, getting dressed for the Saturday afternoon game.

Because Trixie asked, Laura waited for her to fall asleep. She came downstairs in time to see Daniel leave, and he didn’t have to tell her where he was headed. Even worse, Laura wasn’t sure she would have stopped him.

Biblical justice was antiquated¹⁶⁹, or so she had been taught. You couldn’t hack¹⁷⁰ off the hand of a thief; you couldn’t stone a murderer to death. A more advanced society took care of its justice in a courtroom - something Laura had advocated until about five hours ago. A trial might be more civilized¹⁷¹, but emotionally, it couldn’t possibly pack as much satisfaction.

She tried to imagine what Daniel might do if he found Jason, but she couldn’t. It had been so long since Daniel had been anything but quiet and mild-mannered that she had completely forgotten the shadow that had once clung to him, so dark and unpredictable that she’d had to come closer for a second glance. Laura felt the same way she had last Christmas when she’d hung one of Trixie’s baby shoes on the tree as an ornament¹⁷²: wistful, aware that her daughter had once been tiny enough to fit into this slipper⁸⁵ but unable to hold that picture in her head along with the one in front of her eyes - a teenage Trixie dancing around the balsam in her bare feet, stringing white lights in her wake. She tried to sit down with a book, but she reread the same page four times. She turned on the television but could not find the humor in any canned jokes.

A moment later, she found herself at the computer, Googling the word rape.

There were 10,900,000 hits, and immediately that made Laura feel better. Strength in numbers: She was not the only mother who’d felt this way; Trixie was not the only victim. The Web sites rooted this godawful word, and all the suffocating¹⁷³ aftershocks that hung from it like Spanish moss.

She started clicking: One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or a completed rape in her lifetime, adding up to 17.7 million people.

Sixty-six percent of rape victims know their assailant.

Forty-eight percent are raped by a friend.

Twenty percent of rapes¹⁴ take place at the home of a friend, neighbor, or relative.

More than half occur within a mile of the victim’s home.

Eighty percent of rape victims are under age thirty. Girls

between ages sixteen and nineteen are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of sexual assault.

Sixty-one percent of rapes are not reported to the police. If a rape is reported, there’s a 50.8 percent chance that an arrest will be made. If an arrest is made, there’s an 80 percent chance of prosecution¹⁷⁵. If there’s a prosecution, there’s a 58 percent chance of felony conviction. If there’s a felony conviction, there’s a 69 percent chance that the rapist will actually spend time in jail. Of the 39 percent of rapes that are reported to police, then, there’s only a 16.3 percent chance that the rapist will wind up in prison. If you factor in all the unreported rapes, 94 percent of rapists walk free.

Laura stared at the screen, at the cursor blinking on one of the multiple percent signs. Trixie was one of these numbers now, one of these percents. She wondered how it was that she’d never truly studied this statistical¹⁷⁶ symbol before: a figure split in two, a pair of empty circles on either side.

Daniel had to park far away from the entrance to the municipal rink, which wasn’t surprising on a Saturday afternoon. High school hockey games in Bethel, Maine, drew the same kind of crowds high school football did in Midwestern communities. There were girls standing⁴⁴ in the lobby, fixing their lipstick in the reflection of the plate-glass windows, and toddlers weaving through the denim¹⁷⁷ forest of grown-up legs. The grizzled man who sold hot dogs and nachos and Swiss Miss cocoa had taken up residence behind the kitchenette and was singing Motown as he ladled sauerkraut into a bun.

Daniel walked through the crowd as if he were invisible, staring at the proud parents and spirited students who had come to cheer on their hometown heroes. He followed the swell of the human tide through the double doors of the lobby, the ones that opened into the rink. He didn’t have a plan, really. What he wanted was to feel Jason Underhill’s flesh under his fists. To smack³⁴ his head up against the wall and scare him into contrition¹⁷⁸.

Daniel was just about to swing inside the home team’s locker¹⁷⁹ room when the door opened beneath his hand. He flattened himself up against the boards in time to see Detective Bartholemew leading Jason Underhill out. The kid was still wearing his hockey gear, in his stocking feet, carrying his skates in one hand. His face was flushed and his eyes were trained on the rubber mats on the floor.

The coach followed close behind, yelling, “If it’s just a chat, damn it, you could wait till after the game!”

Gradually, the people in the stands noticed Jason’s departure and grew quiet, unsure of what they were watching. One man - Jason’s father, presumably - pushed down from the bleachers and started running toward his son.

Daniel stood very still for a moment, certain that Bartholemew hadn’t seen him, until the detective turned back and looked him straight in the eye. By now the crowd was buzzing with speculation¹⁸¹; the air around Daniel’s ears was pounding like a timpani . . . but for that moment, the two men existed in a vacuum, acknowledging each other with the smallest of nods and the quiet understanding that each of them would do what he had to.

“You went to the rink, didn’t you,” Laura said, as soon as Daniel walked through the door.

He nodded and busied himself with unzipping his coat, hanging it carefully on one of the pegs¹⁸² in the mudroom.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Vengeance¹⁸³ was a funny thing: You wanted the satisfaction of knowing it had occurred, but you never wanted to actually hear the words out loud, because then you’d have to admit to yourself that you’d wanted proof, and that somehow made you baser, less civilized. Daniel found himself staring at Laura as he sank to the stairs. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he said quietly.

Just that quickly, this had become a different conversation, a train run off its course. Laura stepped back as if he’d struck her, and bright spots of color rose on her cheeks. “How long have you known?”

Daniel shrugged. “A while, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He had asked himself the same question in the last few days a hundred times over. He’d pretended not to see all the late nights, the disconnections, because then he’d have been forced to make a choice: Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with somebody else?

But there had been a point in his relationship with Laura where Daniel had been irredeemable, and she had believed he could change. Did he owe her any less? And for that matter, if he let his anger and his shame get the best of him and threw her out of the house, wouldn’t he be acting on adrenaline, the way he used to when he lost control?

It was this simple: If he couldn’t forgive Laura - if he let himself be consumed by this - he was behaving like the kind of man he used to be.

But he did not have the words to say all this. “If I’d said something about it,” Daniel said, “then you would have told me it was true.”

“It’s over, if that means anything.”

He looked up at Laura, his gaze narrow. “Because of Trixie?”

“Before.” She moved across the brick floor, her arms folded across her chest, and stood in a shaft¹⁸⁴ of fading light. “I broke it off the night that she . . . that Trixie . . .” Her sentence unraveled at its edge.

“Were you fucking him the night our daughter was raped?”

“Jesus, Daniel”

“Were you? Is that why you didn’t answer the phone when I was trying to tell you about Trixie?” A muscle tightened¹⁸⁵ along the column of Daniel’s throat. “What’s his name, Laura? I think you owe me that much. I think I ought to know who you wanted when you stopped wanting me.”

Laura turned away from him. “I want to stop talking about this.”

Suddenly, Daniel was on his feet, pinning Laura against the wall, his body a fortress¹⁸⁶, his anger an electric current. He grabbed Laura’s upper arms and shook her so hard that her head snapped back and her eyes went wide with fear. He threw her own words back at her: “What you want,” he said, his voice raw. ‘”What you want?”

Then Laura shoved at him, stronger than he’d given her credit for being. She circled him, never losing eye contact, a lion tamer unwilling¹⁸⁷ to turn her back on the beast. It was enough to bring Daniel to his senses. He stared down at his hands - the ones that had seized her - as if they belonged to someone else.

In that instant, he was standing again in the spring bog¹⁸⁸ behind the school in Akiak, striped with mud and blood, holding his fists high. During the fight, he’d broken two ribs, he had lost a tooth, he had opened a gash¹⁸⁹ over his left eye. He was weaving, but he wasn’t about to give in to the pain. Who else, Daniel had challenged, until one by one, their hot black gazes fell to the ground like stones.

Shaken, Daniel tried to shove the violence back from wherever it had spilled, but it was like repacking a parachute - part of it trailed between him and Laura, a reminder¹⁹⁰ that the next time he jumped off that cliff of emotion, he might not wind up safe. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

Laura bowed her head, but not before he saw the tears in her eyes. “Oh, Daniel,” she said. “Me too.”

Trixie slept through Jason Underhill’s unofficial interrogation in the lobby of the hockey rink, and the moment shortly thereafter when he was officially taken into custody¹⁹¹. She slept while the secretary at the police department took her lunch break and called her husband on the phone to tell him who’d been booked not ten minutes before. She slept as that man told his coworkers at the paper mill that Bethel might not win the Maine State hockey championship after all, and why. She was still sleeping when one of the millworkers had a beer on the way home that night with his brother, a reporter for the Augusta Tribune, who made a few phone calls and found out that a warrant had indeed been sworn out that morning, charging a minor with gross sexual assault. She slept while the reporter phoned the Bethel PD pretending to be the father of a girl who’d been in earlier that day to give a statement, asking if he’d left a hat behind. “No, Mr. Stone,” the secretary had said, “but I’ll call you if it turns up.”

Trixie continued to sleep while the story was filed, while it was printed. She stayed asleep while the paper was bound with string and sent off in newspaper vans, tossed from the windows of the delivery boys’ ratty Hondas. She was asleep still the next morning when everyone in Bethel read the front page. But by then, they already knew why Jason Underhill had been summoned away from a Bethel High School hockey game the previous day. They knew that Roy Underhill had hired his son a Portland lawyer and was telling anyone who’d listen that his son had been framed. And even though the article was ethical¹⁹² enough never to refer to her by name, everyone knew that it was Trixie Stone, still asleep, who had set this tragedy in motion.

Because Jason was seventeen, the district court judge was sitting as a juvenile¹⁹³ judge. And because Jason was seventeen, the courtroom

was closed to spectators. Jason was wearing the brand-new blazer and tie his mother had bought him for college interviews.

He’d gotten a haircut. His attorney had made sure of that, said sometimes a judge’s decisions could hinge on something as frivolous¹⁹⁴ as whether or not he could see your eyes.

Dutch Oosterhaus, his lawyer, was so smooth that every now and then Jason was tempted¹⁷⁴ to look at the floor as he walked by, to see if he’d left a slick trail. He wore shoes that squeaked¹⁹⁵ and the kind of shirts that required cuff¹⁹⁶ links. But his father said

Dutch was the best in the state and that he’d be able to make this mess go away.

Jason didn’t know what the hell Trixie was trying to pull. They had been going at it, full force - consensual, Dutch called it. If that was how she communicated no, then it was a foreign language Jason had never learned.

And yet. Jason tried to hide the way his hands were shaking under the table. He tried to look confident and maybe a little bit pissed off, when in fact he was so scared he felt like he could throw up at any moment.

The district attorney made him think of a shark. She had a wide, flat face and blond hair that was nearly white, but it was the teeth that did it - they were pointy and large and looked like they’d be happy to rip into a person. Her name was Marita Soorenstad, and she had a brother who’d been a legend about ten years ago on the Bethel hockey team, although it hadn’t seemed to soften¹⁹⁷ her any toward Jason himself. “Your Honor,” she said, “although the State isn’t asking for the defendant¹⁹⁸ to be held at a detention¹⁹⁹ facility, there are several conditions we’d ask for. We’d like to make sure that he has no contact with the victim or her family. We’d prefer that he enter a drug and alcohol treatment program. With the exception of the academic school day, the State would like to request that the defendant not be allowed to leave his housewhich would include attending sporting events.”

 The judge was an older man with a bad comb-over. “I’m going to pick and choose the conditions of release, Mr. Underhill. If you violate any of them, you’re going to be locked up in Portland.

You understand?” Jason swallowed hard and nodded.

“You are not to have any contact with the victim or her family.

You are to be in bed, alone, by ten P.M. You will steer²⁰⁰ clear of alcohol and drugs, and will begin mandatory²⁰¹ substance abuse counseling. But as for the States request for house arrest... I’m disinclined to agree to that. No need to ruin the Buccaneers’ chance for a repeat state championship when there will be plenty of other people around the rink in a supervisory context.” He closed the folder²⁰³. “We’re adjourned²⁰⁴.” Behind him, Jason could hear his mother weeping. Dutch started packing up his files and stepped across the aisle²⁰⁵ to speak to the Shark. Jason thought of Trixie, kissing him first that night at Zephyr’s. He thought of Trixie hours before that, sobbing²⁰⁶ in his car, saying that without him, her life was over.

Had she been planning, even then, to end his? Two days after being sexually assaulted, Trixie felt her life crack, unequally, along the fault line of the rape. The old Trixie Stone used to be a person who dreamed of flying and wanted, when she got old enough, to jump out of a plane and try it. The new Trixie couldn’t even sleep with the light off. The old Trixie liked wearing T-shirts that hugged her tight; the new Trixie went to her father’s dresser for a sweatshirt that she could hide beneath. The old Trixie sometimes showered twice a day, so that she could smell like the pear soap that her mother always put in her Christmas stocking. The new Trixie felt dirty, no matter how many times she scrubbed herself.

The old Trixie felt like part of a group. The new Trixie felt alone, even when she was surrounded by people. The old Trixie would have taken one look at the new Trixie and dismissed her as a total loser.

There was a knock on her door. That was new, too - her father used to just stick his head in, but even he’d become sensitive to the fact that she jumped at her own shadow. “Hey,” he said.

“You feel up to company?” She didn’t, but she nodded, thinking he meant himself, until he pushed the door wider and she saw that woman Janice, the sexual assault advocate who’d been at the hospital with her. She was wearing a sweater with a jack-o’-lantern on it, although it was closer to Christmas, and enough eyeshadow to cover a battalion²⁰⁷ of supermodels. “Oh,” Trixie said. “It’s you.” She sounded rude, and there was something about that that made a little spark flare²⁰⁸ under her heart. Being a bitch felt surprisingly good, a careful compromise that nearly made up for the fact that she couldn’t ever be herself again.

“I’ll just, um, let you two talk,” Trixie’s father said, and even though she tried to send him silent urgent messages with her eyes to keep him from leaving her alone with this woman, he couldn’t hear her SOS.

“So,” Janice said, after he closed the door. “How are you holding up?” Trixie shrugged. How had she not noticed at the hospital how much this woman’s voice annoyed her? Like a Zen canary.

“I guess you’re still sort of overwhelmed. That’s perfectly normal.” “Normal,” Trixie repeated sarcastically²⁰⁹. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I’d describe myself right now.” “Normal’s relative,” Janice said.

If it was relative, Trixie thought, then it was the crazy uncle that nobody could stand to be around at family functions, the one who talked about himself in the third person and ate only blue foods and whom everyone else made fun of on the way home.

“It’s a whole bunch of baby steps. You’ll get there.” For the past forty-eight hours, Trixie had felt like she was swimming underwater. She would hear people talking and it might as well have been Croatian for all that she could understand the words.

When it got to be too quiet, she was sure that she heard Jason’s voice, soft as smoke, curling into her ear.

“It gets a little easier every day,” Janice said, and Trixie all of a sudden hated her with a passion. What the hell did Janice know? She wasn’t sitting here, so tired that the insides of her bones ached. She didn’t understand how even right now, Trixie wished she could fall asleep, because the only thing she had to look forward to was the five seconds when she woke up in the morning and hadn’t remembered everything, yet.

“Sometimes it helps to get it all out,” Janice suggested. “Play an instrument. Scream in the shower. Write it all down in a journal.” The last thing Trixie wanted to do was write about what had happened, unless she got to burn it when she was done.

“Lots of women find it helpful to join a survivors’ group . .

.” “So we can all sit around and talk about how we feel like shit?” Trixie exploded. Suddenly she wanted Janice to crawl back from whatever hole good Samaritans came from. She didn’t want to make believe that she had a snowball’s chance in hell of fitting back into her room, her life, this world. “You know,” she said, “this has been real, but I think I’d rather contemplate²¹⁰ suicide or something fun like that. I don’t need you checking up on me.” “Trixie . . .” “You have no idea what I feel like,” Trixie shouted. “So don’t stand here and pretend we’re in this together. You weren’t there that night. That was just me.” Janice stepped forward, until she was close enough for Trixie to touch. “It was 1972 and I was fifteen. I was walking home and I took a shortcut²¹¹ through the elementary school playground. There was a man there and he said he’d lost his dog. He wanted to know if I’d help him look. When I was underneath the slide, he knocked me down and raped me.” Trixie stared at her, speechless.

“He kept me there for three hours. The whole time, all I could think about was how I used to play there after school. The boys and the girls always kept to separate sides of the jungle gym. We used to dare each other. We’d run up to the boys’ side, and then back to safety.” Trixie looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Baby steps,” Janice said.

That weekend, Laura learned that there are no cosmic referees²¹².

Time-outs do not get called, not even when your world has taken a blow that renders you senseless. The dishwasher still needs to be emptied and the hamper²¹³ overflows²¹⁴ with dirty clothes and the high school buddy²¹⁵ you haven²¹⁶’t spoken to in six months calls to catch up, not realizing that you cannot tell her what’s been going on in your life without breaking down. The twelve students in your class section still expect you to show up on Monday morning.

Laura had anticipated hunkering down with Trixie, protecting her while she licked her wounds. However, Trixie wanted to be by herself, and that left Laura wandering a house that was really Daniel’s domain²¹⁷. They were still dancing around each other, a careful choreography that involved leaving a room the moment he entered, lest they have to truly communicate.

“I’m going to take a leave of absence from the college,” she had told Daniel on Sunday, when he was reading the newspaper. But hours later, when they were lying on opposite sides of the bed - that tremendous elephant of the affair snug²¹⁸ between them - he had brought it up again. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said.

She had looked at him carefully, not sure what he was trying to imply. Did he not want her around 24/7, because it was too uncomfortable? Did he think she cared more about her career than her daughter? “Maybe it will help Trixie,” he added, “if she sees that it’s business as usual.” Laura had looked up at the ceiling, at a watermark in the shape of a penguin²¹⁹. “What if she needs me?” “Then I’ll call you,” Daniel replied coolly. “And you can come right home.” His words were a slap - the last time he’d called her, she hadn’t answered.

The next morning, she fished for a pair of stockings and one of her work skirts. She packed a breakfast she could eat in the car and she left Trixie a note. As she drove, she became aware of how the more distance she put between herself and her home, the lighter²²⁰ she felt - until by the time she reached the gates of the college, she was certain that the only thing anchoring her was her seat belt.

When Laura arrived at her classroom, the students were already clustered around the table, involved in a heated discussion. She’d missed this easy understanding of who she was, where she belonged, the comfort of intellectual sparring. Snippets of the conversation bled into the hallway. I heard from my cousin, who goes to the high school. . . crucified. . . had it coming. For a moment Laura hesitated outside the door, wondering how she could have been naive²²¹ enough to believe this horrible thing had happened to Trixie, when in truth it had happened to all three of them. Taking a deep breath, she walked into the room, and twelve pairs of eyes turned to her in utter silence.

“Don’t stop on my account,” she said evenly.

The undergraduates shifted uncomfortably. Laura had so badly wanted to settle into the comfort zone of academia - a place so fixed²²² and immutable²²³ that Laura would be assured she could pick up just where she left off - but to her surprise, she no longer seemed to fit. The college was the same; so were the students. It was Laura herself who’d changed.

“Professor Stone,” one of the students said, “are you okay?” Laura blinked as their faces swam into focus before her. “No,” she said, suddenly exhausted by the thought of having to deceive anyone else anymore. “I’m not.” Then she stood up - leaving her notes, her coat, and her baffled class - and walked into the striking snow, heading back to where she should have been all along.

“Do it,” Trixie said, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

She was at Live and Let Dye, a salon²²⁴ within walking distance of her home that catered²²⁵ to the blue-haired set and that, under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in. But this was her first venture out of the house, and in spite of the fact that Janice had given her father a pamphlet about how not to be overprotective, he was reluctant to let Trixie go too far. “If you’re not back in an hour,” her father had said, “I’m coming after you.” She imagined him, even now, waiting by the bay window that offered the best view of their street, so that he’d see her the minute she came back into view. But she’d made it this far, and she wasn’t going to let the outing go to waste. Janice had said that when it came to making a decision, she should make a list of pros⁹⁶ and cons³¹ - and as far as Trixie could tell, anything that made her forget the girl she used to be could only be a good thing.

“You’ve got quite a tail here,” the ancient hairdresser said.

“You could donate it to Locks of Love.” “What’s that?” “A charity that makes wigs²²⁶ for cancer patients.” Trixie stared at herself in the mirror. She liked the idea of helping²²⁷ someone who might actually be worse off than she was. She liked the idea of someone who was worse off than she was, period.

“Okay,” Trixie said. “What do I have to do?” “We take care of it,” the hairdresser said. “You just give me your name, so that the charity can send you a nice thank-you card.” If she’d been thinking clearly - which, let’s face it, she wasn’t - Trixie would have made up an alias²²⁸. But maybe the staff at Live and Let Dye didn’t read the newspapers, or ever watch anything but The Golden Girls, because the hairdresser didn’t bat a fake eyelash when Trixie told her who she was. She fastened a string around Trixie’s waist-length hair and tied it to a little card printed with her name. Then she held up the scissors. “Say good-bye,” the hairdresser said.

Trixie drew in her breath at the first cut. Then she noticed how much lighter she felt without all that hair to weigh her down.

She imagined what it would be like to have her hair so short that she could feel the wind rushing past the backs of her ears. “I want a buzz cut,” Trixie announced.

The hairdresser faltered²²⁹. “Darlin’,” she said, “that’s for boys.” “I don’t care,” Trixie said.

The hairdresser sighed. “Let me see if I can make us both happy.” Trixie closed her eyes and felt the hairdressers scissors chatter around her head. Hair tumbled down in soft strawberry tufts, like the feathers of a bird shot out of the sky.

“Good-bye,” she whispered.

They had bought the king-sized bed when Trixie was three and spent more time running from nightmares in her own bed straight into the buffer²³⁰ zone of their own. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Back then, they had still been thinking about having more kids, and it seemed to say married with a finality that you couldn’t help but admire. And yet, they had fallen in love in a dormitory bed, on a twin mattress²³¹. They had slept so close to each other that their body heat would rise each night like a spirit on the ceiling, and they’d wake up with the covers kicked off on the floor. Given that, it was amazing to think that with all the space between them now, they were still too close for comfort.

Daniel knew that Laura was still awake. She had come home from the college almost immediately after she’d left, and she hadn’t given him an explanation why. As for Daniel, she’d spoken to him only sporadically²³², economic transactions of information: had Trixie eaten (no); did she say anything else (no); did the police call (no, but Mrs. Walstone from the end of the block had, as if this was any of her business). Immediately, she’d thrown herself into a tornado of activity: cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming underneath the couch cushions, watching Trixie come back through the door with that hatchet²³³ job of a haircut and swallowing her shock enough to suggest a game of Monopoly. It was, he realized, as if she was trying to make up for her absence these past few months, as if she’d judged herself and meted²³⁴ out a sentence.

Now, lying in bed, he wondered how two people could be just a foot of distance away from each other but a million miles apart.

“They knew,” Laura said.

“Who?” “Everyone. At school.” She rolled toward him, so that in the plush dark he could make out the green of her eyes. “They all were talking about it.” Daniel could have told her that none of this would go away, not until he and Laura and even Trixie could get past it. He had learned this when he was eleven years old, and Cane²⁰²’s grandfather took him on his first moose hunt. At dusk, they’d set out on the Kuskokwim River in the small aluminum²³⁵ boat. Daniel was dropped off at one bend, Cane at another, to cover more ground.

He had huddled²³⁶ in the willows²³⁷, wondering how long it would be before Cane and his grandfather came back, wondering if they ever would. When the moose stepped delicately out of the greenery spindled legs, brindled²³⁸ back, bulbous noseDaniel’s heart had started to race. He’d lifted his rifle and thought, I want this, more than anything.

At that moment, the moose slipped into the wall of willows and disappeared.

On the ride home, when Cane and his grandfather learned what had happened, they muttered kass’aq and shook their heads. Didn’t Daniel know that if you thought about what you were hunting while you were hunting it, you might as well be telegraphing to the animal that you were there? At first, Daniel had shrugged this off as Yup’ik Eskimo superstition²³⁹ - like having to lick your bowl clean so you wouldn’t slip on ice, or eating the tails of fish to become a fast runner.

But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing.

An insult didn’t have to be shouted at you to make you bleed; a vow²⁴⁰ didn’t have to be whispered to you to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path.

“If we want things to be normal,” Daniel said, “we have to act like we’re already there.” “What do you mean?” “Maybe Trixie should go back to school.” Laura came up on an elbow. “You must be joking.” Daniel hesitated. “Janice suggested it. It isn’t much good to sit around here all day, reliving what happened.” “She’ll see him, in school.” “There’s a court order in place; Jason can’t go near her. She has as much right to be there as he does.” There was a long silence. “If she goes back,” Laura said finally, “it has to be because she wants to.” Daniel had the sudden sense that Laura was speaking not only of Trixie but also herself. It was as if Trixie’s rape was a constant fall of leaves they were so busy raking away they could ignore the fact that beneath them, the ground was no longer solid.

The night pressed down on Daniel. “Did you bring him here? To this bed?” Laura’s breathing caught. “No.” “I picture him with you, and I don’t even know what he looks like.” “It was a mistake, Daniel” “Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn’t walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy’s bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice.” The truth had scorched²⁴¹ Daniel’s throat, and he found himself breathing hard.

“I made the choice to end it, too. To come back.” “Am I supposed to thank you for that?” He flung an arm across his eyes, better to be blind.

Laura’s profile was cast in silver. “Do you ... do you want me to move out?” He had thought about it. There was a part of him that did not want to see her in the bathroom brushing her teeth, or setting the kettle on the stove. It was too ordinary, a mirage²⁴² of a marriage.

But there was another part of him that no longer remembered who he used to be without Laura. In fact, it was because of her that he’d become the kind of man he now was. It was like any other dual¹⁸⁰ dynamic that was part and parcel of his art: You couldn’t have strength without weakness; you couldn’t have light without dark; you couldn’t have love without loss. “I don’t think it would be good for Trixie if you left right now,” Daniel said finally.

Laura rolled over to face him. “What about you? Would it be good for you?” Daniel stared at her. Laura had been inked onto his life, as indelible as any tattoo²⁴³. It wouldn’t matter if she was physically present or not; he would carry her with him forever. Trixie was proof of that. But he’d folded enough loads of laundry during Oprah and Dr. Phil to know how infidelity worked. Betrayal was a stone beneath the mattress of the bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you’d never forget? When Daniel didn’t respond to her, Laura rolled onto her back.

“Do you hate me?” “Sometimes.” “Sometimes I hate myself, too.” Daniel pretended that he could hear Trixie’s breathing, even and untroubled, through the bedroom wall. “Was it really so bad? The two of us?” Laura shook her head.

“Then why did you do it?” For a long time, she did not answer. Daniel assumed she’d fallen asleep. But then her voice pricked²⁴⁴ on the edges of the stars strung outside the window. “Because,” she said, “he reminded me of you.” Trixie knew that at the slightest provocation²⁴⁵, she could stand up and walk out of class and head down to the office for refuge without any teacher even blinking. She had been given her fathers cell phone. Call me anytime, he said, and I will be there before you hang up. She had stumbled through an awkward conversation with the school principal, who phoned to tell her that he would certainly do his best to make Bethel High a haven of safety for her. To that end, she was no longer taking psych with Jason; she had an independent study instead in the library. She could write a report on anything. Right now, she was thinking of a topic: Girls Who Would Rather Disappear.

“I’m sure that Zephyr and your other friends will be happy to see you,” her father said. Neither of them mentioned that Zephyr hadn’t called, not once, to see how she was doing. Trixie tried to convince herself that was because Zephyr felt guilty, with the fight they’d had and what had happened afterward²⁴⁶ as a direct result. She didn’t explain to her father that she didn’t really have any other friends in the ninth grade. She’d been too busy filling her world with Jason to maintain old relationships, or to bother starting new ones.

“What if I’ve changed my mind?” Trixie asked softly.

Her father looked at her. “Then I’ll take you home. It’s that easy, Trix.” She glanced out the car window. It was snowing, a fine fat-flaked dusting that hung in the trees and softened²⁴⁷ the edges of the landscape. The cold seeped²⁴⁸ through the stocking cap she wore - who knew her hair had actually kept her so warm? She kept forgetting she’d cut it all off in all the smallest ways: when she looked in the mirror and got the shock of her life, when she tried to pull a long nonexistent ponytail out from beneath the collar of her coat.

To be honest, she looked horrible - the short cap of hair made her eyes look even bigger and more anxious; the severity of the cut was better suited to a boy - but Trixie liked it. If people were going to stare, she wanted to know it was because she looked different, not because she was different.

The gates of the school came into view through the windshield wipers, the student parking lot to the right. Under the cover of snow, the cars looked like a sea of beached whales. She wondered which one was Jason’s. She imagined him inside the building already, where he’d been for two whole days longer than her, sowing the seeds of his side of the story that by now, surely, had grown into a thicket²⁴⁹.

Her father pulled to the curb²⁵⁰. “I’ll walk you in,” he said.

All live wires inside Trixie tripped. Could there be anything that screamed out loser! more than a rape victim who had to be walked into school by her daddy? “I can do it myself,” she insisted, but when she went to unbuckle her seat belt she found that her mind couldn’t make her fingers do the work they needed to.

Suddenly she felt her father’s hands on the fastenings, the harness coming free. “If you want to go home,” he said gently, “that’s okay.” Trixie nodded, hating the tears that welled at the base of her throat. “I know.” It was stupid to be scared. What could possibly happen inside that school that was any worse than what already had? But you could reason with yourself all day and still have butterflies in your stomach.

“When I was growing up in the village,” Trixie’s father said, “the place we lived was haunted.” Trixie blinked. She could count on one hand the number of times in her life that her father had talked about growing up in Alaska.

There were certain remnants of his childhood that labeled him as different - like the way, if it got too loud, he’d have to leave the room, and the obsession²⁵¹ he had with conserving²⁵² water even though they had an endless supply through their home well. Trixie knew this much: Her father had been the only white boy in a native Yup’ik Eskimo village called Akiak. His mother, who raised him by herself, had taught school there. He had left Alaska when he was eighteen, and he swore he’d never go back.

“Our house was attached to the school. The last person who’d lived in it was the old principal, who’d hanged himself from a beam in the kitchen. Everyone knew about it. Sometimes, in the school, the audiovisual equipment would turn on even when it was unplugged. Or the basketballs lying on the floor of the gym would start to bounce by themselves. In our house, drawers would fly open every now and then, and sometimes you could smell aftershave, out of nowhere.” Trixie’s father looked up at her. “The Yupiit are afraid of ghosts. Sometimes, in school, I’d see kids spit into the air, to check if the ghost was close enough to steal their saliva. Or they’d walk around the building three times so that the ghost couldn’t follow them back to their own homes.” He shrugged. “The thing is ... I was the white kid. I talked funny and I looked funny and I got picked on for that on a daily basis. I was terrified of that ghost just like they were, but I never let anyone know it. That way, I knew they might call me a lot of awful names . . . but one of them wasn’t coward.” “Jason’s not a ghost,” Trixie said quietly.

Her father tugged²⁵³ her hat down over her ears. His eyes were so dark she could see herself shining in them. “Well, then,” he said, “I guess you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.” Daniel nearly ran after Trixie as she navigated²⁵⁴ the slippery sidewalk up to the front of the school. What if he was wrong about this? What if Janice and the doctors and everyone else didn’t know how cruel teenagers could be? What if Trixie came home even more devastated²⁵⁵? Trixie walked with her head down, bracing²⁵⁶ against the cold. Her green jacket was a stain against the snow. She didn’t turn back to look at him.

When she was little, Daniel had always waited for Trixie to enter the school building before he drove away. There was too much that could go wrong: She might trip and fall; she could be approached by a bully²⁵⁷; she might be teased by a pack of girls.

He’d liked to imagine that just by keeping an eye on her, he could imbue²⁵⁸ her with the power of safety, much like the way he’d draw it onto one of his comics panels in a wavy²⁵⁹, flowing force field.

The truth was, though, that Daniel had needed Trixie far more than Trixie had ever needed him. Without realizing it, she’d put on a show for him every day: hopping²⁶⁰, twirling, spreading her arms and taking a running leap, as if she thought that one of these mornings she might actually get airborne. He’d watch her and he’d see how easy it was for kids to believe in a world different from the one presented to them. Then he’d drive home and translate that stroke by stroke onto a fresh page.

He could remember wondering how long it would take for reality to catch up to his daughter. He could remember thinking: The saddest day in the world will be the one when she stops pretending.

Daniel waited until Trixie slipped through the double doors of the school, and then pulled carefully away from the curb. He needed a load of sand in the back of his pickup²⁶¹ to keep it from fishtailing in the snow. Whatever it took, right now, to keep his balance.

1 fiddled   

v.伪造( fiddle的过去式和过去分词 )；篡改；骗取；修理或稍作改动

参考例句：

• He fiddled the company's accounts. 他篡改了公司的账目。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He began with Palestrina, and fiddled all the way through Bartok. 他从帕勒斯春纳的作品一直演奏到巴塔克的作品。 来自辞典例句

2 tornado   

n.飓风，龙卷风

参考例句：

• A tornado whirled into the town last week.龙卷风上周袭击了这座城市。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

3 hurled   

v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂

参考例句：

• He hurled a brick through the window. 他往窗户里扔了块砖。
• The strong wind hurled down bits of the roof. 大风把屋顶的瓦片刮了下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 shrieking   

v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They were all shrieking with laughter. 他们都发出了尖锐的笑声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 protocol   

n.议定书，草约，会谈记录，外交礼节

参考例句：

• We must observe the correct protocol.我们必须遵守应有的礼仪。
• The statesmen signed a protocol.那些政治家签了议定书。

6 hem   

n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制

参考例句：

• The hem on her skirt needs sewing.她裙子上的褶边需要缝一缝。
• The hem of your dress needs to be let down an inch.你衣服的折边有必要放长1英寸。

7 numb   

adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木

参考例句：

• His fingers were numb with cold.他的手冻得发麻。
• Numb with cold,we urged the weary horses forward.我们冻得发僵，催着疲惫的马继续往前走。

8 mermaid   

n.美人鱼

参考例句：

• How popular would that girl be with the only mermaid mom!和人鱼妈妈在一起，那个女孩会有多受欢迎！
• The little mermaid wasn't happy because she didn't want to wait.小美人鱼不太高兴，因为她等不及了。

9 veered   

v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的过去式和过去分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转

参考例句：

• The bus veered onto the wrong side of the road. 公共汽车突然驶入了逆行道。
• The truck veered off the road and crashed into a tree. 卡车突然驶离公路撞上了一棵树。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 bumper   

n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的

参考例句：

• The painting represents the scene of a bumper harvest.这幅画描绘了丰收的景象。
• This year we have a bumper harvest in grain.今年我们谷物丰收。

11 ace   

n.A牌；发球得分；佼佼者；adj.杰出的

参考例句：

• A good negotiator always has more than one ace in the hole.谈判高手总有数张王牌在手。
• He is an ace mechanic.He can repair any cars.他是一流的机械师,什么车都会修。

12 recede   

vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进

参考例句：

• The colleges would recede in importance.大学的重要性会降低。
• He saw that the dirty water had begun to recede.他发现那污浊的水开始往下退了。

13 rape   

n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸

参考例句：

• The rape of the countryside had a profound ravage on them.对乡村的掠夺给他们造成严重创伤。
• He was brought to court and charged with rape.他被带到法庭并被指控犯有强奸罪。

14 rapes   

n.芸苔( rape的名词复数 )；强奸罪；强奸案；肆意损坏v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的第三人称单数 )；强奸

参考例句：

• The man who had committed several rapes was arrested. 那个犯了多起强奸案的男人被抓起来了。 来自辞典例句
• The incidence of reported rapes rose 0.8 percent. 美国联邦调查局还发布了两份特别报告。 来自互联网

15 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

16 defensive   

adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的

参考例句：

• Their questions about the money put her on the defensive.他们问到钱的问题，使她警觉起来。
• The Government hastily organized defensive measures against the raids.政府急忙布置了防卫措施抵御空袭。

17 vouch   

v.担保；断定；n.被担保者

参考例句：

• They asked whether I was prepared to vouch for him.他们问我是否愿意为他作担保。
• I can vouch for the fact that he is a good worker.我保证他是好员工。

18 moron   

n.极蠢之人，低能儿

参考例句：

• I used to think that Gordon was a moron.我曾以为戈登是个白痴。
• He's an absolute moron!他纯粹是个傻子！

19 raped   

v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸

参考例句：

• A young woman was brutally raped in her own home. 一名年轻女子在自己家中惨遭强暴。 来自辞典例句
• We got stick together, or we will be having our women raped. 我们得团结一致，不然我们的妻女就会遭到蹂躏。 来自辞典例句

20 appraise   

v.估价，评价，鉴定

参考例句：

• An expert came to appraise the value of my antiques.一位专家来对我的古玩作了估价。
• It is very high that people appraise to his thesis.人们对他的论文评价很高。

21 numbness   

n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆

参考例句：

• She was fighting off the numbness of frostbite. 她在竭力摆脱冻僵的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sometimes they stay dead, causing' only numbness. 有时，它们没有任何反应，只会造成麻木。 来自时文部分

22 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

23 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

24 squeak   

n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another squeak out of you!我不想再听到你出声！
• We won the game,but it was a narrow squeak.我们打赢了这场球赛，不过是侥幸取胜。

25 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

26 linoleum   

n.油布，油毯

参考例句：

• They mislaid the linoleum.他们把油毡放错了地方。
• Who will lay the linoleum?谁将铺设地板油毡？

27 cinder   

n.余烬，矿渣

参考例句：

• The new technology for the preparation of superfine ferric oxide from pyrite cinder is studied.研究了用硫铁矿烧渣为原料，制取超细氧化铁红的新工艺。
• The cinder contains useful iron,down from producing sulphuric acid by contact process.接触法制硫酸的矿渣中含有铁矿。

28 linen   

n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的

参考例句：

• The worker is starching the linen.这名工人正在给亚麻布上浆。
• Fine linen and cotton fabrics were known as well as wool.精细的亚麻织品和棉织品像羊毛一样闻名遐迩。

29 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

30 saturating   

浸湿，浸透( saturate的现在分词 )； 使…大量吸收或充满某物

参考例句：

• In the last days before the vote, both sides are saturating the airwaves. 选举前最后几天，竞选双方占用了所有的广播电台和电视台。
• A saturating rain was expected to end the drought. 只盼下场透雨，解除旱情。

31 cons   

n.欺骗，骗局( con的名词复数 )v.诈骗，哄骗( con的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The pros and cons cancel out. 正反两种意见抵消。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• We should hear all the pros and cons of the matter before we make a decision. 我们在对这事做出决定之前，应该先听取正反两方面的意见。 来自《简明英汉词典》

32 bloodied   

v.血污的( bloody的过去式和过去分词 )；流血的；屠杀的；残忍的

参考例句：

• his bruised and bloodied nose 他沾满血的青肿的鼻子
• His pants leg was torn and bloodied when he fell. 他跌交时裤腿破了，还染上了血。 来自辞典例句

33 smacking   

活泼的，发出响声的，精力充沛的

参考例句：

• He gave both of the children a good smacking. 他把两个孩子都狠揍了一顿。
• She inclined her cheek,and John gave it a smacking kiss. 她把头低下，约翰在她的脸上响亮的一吻。

34 smack   

vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍

参考例句：

• She gave him a smack on the face.她打了他一个嘴巴。
• I gave the fly a smack with the magazine.我用杂志拍了一下苍蝇。

35 maze   

n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑

参考例句：

• He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
• She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时，她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。

36 sobbed   

哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说

参考例句：

• She sobbed out the story of her son's death. 她哭诉着她儿子的死。
• She sobbed out the sad story of her son's death. 她哽咽着诉说她儿子死去的悲惨经过。

37 sob   

n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣

参考例句：

• The child started to sob when he couldn't find his mother.孩子因找不到他妈妈哭了起来。
• The girl didn't answer,but continued to sob with her head on the table.那个女孩不回答，也不抬起头来。她只顾低声哭着。

38 fissure   

n.裂缝；裂伤

参考例句：

• Though we all got out to examine the fissure,he remained in the car.我们纷纷下车察看那个大裂缝，他却呆在车上。
• Ground fissure is the main geological disaster in Xi'an city construction.地裂缝是西安市主要的工程地质灾害问题。

39 cosmetics   

n.化妆品

参考例句：

• We sell a wide range of cosmetics at a very reasonable price. 我们以公道的价格出售各种化妆品。
• Cosmetics do not always cover up the deficiencies of nature. 化妆品未能掩饰天生的缺陷。

40 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

41 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。

42 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

43 grievances   

n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚

参考例句：

• The trade union leader spoke about the grievances of the workers. 工会领袖述说工人们的苦情。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He gave air to his grievances. 他申诉了他的冤情。 来自《简明英汉词典》

44 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

45 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

46 authorize   

v.授权，委任；批准，认可

参考例句：

• He said that he needed to get his supervisor to authorize my refund.他说必须让主管人员批准我的退款。
• Only the President could authorize the use of the atomic bomb.只有总统才能授权使用原子弹。

47 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

48 vomited   

参考例句：

• Corbett leaned against the wall and promptly vomited. 科比特倚在墙边，马上呕吐了起来。
• She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor. 她向前一俯，哇的一声吐了一地。 来自英汉文学

49 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

50 intercourse   

n.性交；交流，交往，交际

参考例句：

• The magazine becomes a cultural medium of intercourse between the two peoples.该杂志成为两民族间文化交流的媒介。
• There was close intercourse between them.他们过往很密。

51 swell   

vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强

参考例句：

• The waves had taken on a deep swell.海浪汹涌。
• His injured wrist began to swell.他那受伤的手腕开始肿了。

52 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

• He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
• He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。

53 maneuver   

n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略

参考例句：

• All the fighters landed safely on the airport after the military maneuver.在军事演习后，所有战斗机都安全降落在机场上。
• I did get her attention with this maneuver.我用这个策略确实引起了她的注意。

54 latch   

n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁

参考例句：

• She laid her hand on the latch of the door.她把手放在门闩上。
• The repairman installed an iron latch on the door.修理工在门上安了铁门闩。

55 knuckles   

n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝

参考例句：

• He gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened. 他紧紧握住方向盘，握得指关节都变白了。
• Her thin hands were twisted by swollen knuckles. 她那双纤手因肿大的指关节而变了形。 来自《简明英汉词典》

56 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

57 hovering   

鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• The helicopter was hovering about 100 metres above the pad. 直升机在离发射台一百米的上空盘旋。
• I'm hovering between the concert and the play tonight. 我犹豫不决今晚是听音乐会还是看戏。

58 snail   

n.蜗牛

参考例句：

• Snail is a small plant-eating creature with a soft body.蜗牛是一种软体草食动物。
• Time moved at a snail's pace before the holidays.放假前的时间过得很慢。

59 fabric   

n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织

参考例句：

• The fabric will spot easily.这种织品很容易玷污。
• I don't like the pattern on the fabric.我不喜欢那块布料上的图案。

60 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

61 carving   

n.雕刻品，雕花

参考例句：

• All the furniture in the room had much carving.房间里所有的家具上都有许多雕刻。
• He acquired the craft of wood carving in his native town.他在老家学会了木雕手艺。

62 ward   

n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开

参考例句：

• The hospital has a medical ward and a surgical ward.这家医院有内科病房和外科病房。
• During the evening picnic,I'll carry a torch to ward off the bugs.傍晚野餐时，我要点根火把，抵挡蚊虫。

63 bruises   

n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was covered with bruises after falling off his bicycle. 他从自行车上摔了下来，摔得浑身伤痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The pear had bruises of dark spots. 这个梨子有碰伤的黑斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

64 unravel   

v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开

参考例句：

• He was good with his hands and could unravel a knot or untangle yarn that others wouldn't even attempt.他的手很灵巧，其他人甚至都不敢尝试的一些难解的绳结或缠在一起的纱线，他都能解开。
• This is the attitude that led him to unravel a mystery that long puzzled Chinese historians.正是这种态度使他解决了长期以来使中国历史学家们大惑不解的谜。

65 sanitary   

adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的

参考例句：

• It's not sanitary to let flies come near food.让苍蝇接近食物是不卫生的。
• The sanitary conditions in this restaurant are abominable.这家饭馆的卫生状况糟透了。

66 commiserated   

v.怜悯，同情( commiserate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She commiserated with the losers on their defeat. 她对失败的一方表示同情。
• We commiserated with the losers. 我们对落败者表示同情。 来自《简明英汉词典》

67 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

68 mortified   

v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等）

参考例句：

• She was mortified to realize he had heard every word she said. 她意识到自己的每句话都被他听到了，直羞得无地自容。
• The knowledge of future evils mortified the present felicities. 对未来苦难的了解压抑了目前的喜悦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

69 prick   

v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛

参考例句：

• He felt a sharp prick when he stepped on an upturned nail.当他踩在一个尖朝上的钉子上时，他感到剧烈的疼痛。
• He burst the balloon with a prick of the pin.他用针一戳，气球就爆了。

70 blotches   

n.（皮肤上的）红斑，疹块( blotch的名词复数 )；大滴 [大片]（墨水或颜色的）污渍

参考例句：

• His skin was covered with unsightly blotches. 他的皮肤上长满了难看的疹块。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His face was covered in red blotches, seemingly a nasty case of acne. 他满脸红斑，像是起了很严重的粉刺。 来自辞典例句

71 saliva   

n.唾液，口水

参考例句：

• He wiped a dribble of saliva from his chin.他擦掉了下巴上的几滴口水。
• Saliva dribbled from the baby's mouth.唾液从婴儿的嘴里流了出来。

72 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

73 stark   

adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地

参考例句：

• The young man is faced with a stark choice.这位年轻人面临严峻的抉择。
• He gave a stark denial to the rumor.他对谣言加以完全的否认。

74 thighs   

n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿

参考例句：

• He's gone to London for skin grafts on his thighs. 他去伦敦做大腿植皮手术了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The water came up to the fisherman's thighs. 水没到了渔夫的大腿。 来自《简明英汉词典》

75 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

76 syllables   

n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a word with two syllables 双音节单词
• 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓，它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

77 accusation   

n.控告，指责，谴责

参考例句：

• I was furious at his making such an accusation.我对他的这种责备非常气愤。
• She knew that no one would believe her accusation.她知道没人会相信她的指控。

78 ribs   

n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹

参考例句：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• Make a small incision below the ribs. 在肋骨下方切开一个小口。

79 zephyr   

n.和风，微风

参考例句：

• I feel very comfortable in the zephyr from the sea.从海上吹来的和风令我非常惬意。
• Zephyr,the West Wind,blew away the clouds so that Apollo,the sun god,could shine and made this flower bloom.西风之神吹散了云朵，太阳神阿波罗得以照耀它并使它开花。

80 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

81 supremely   

adv.无上地，崇高地

参考例句：

• They managed it all supremely well. 这件事他们干得极其出色。
• I consider a supremely beautiful gesture. 我觉得这是非常优雅的姿态。

82 belch   

v.打嗝，喷出

参考例句：

• Cucumber makes me belch.黃瓜吃得我打嗝。
• Plant chimneys belch out dense smoke.工厂的烟囱冒出滚滚浓烟。

83 mites   

n.（尤指令人怜悯的）小孩( mite的名词复数 )；一点点；一文钱；螨

参考例句：

• The only discovered animals are water bears, mites, microscopic rotifers. 能够发现的动物只有海蜘蛛、螨和微小的轮虫。 来自辞典例句
• Mites are frequently found on eggs. 螨会经常出现在蛋上。 来自辞典例句

84 lugging   

超载运转能力

参考例句：

• I would smile when I saw him lugging his golf bags into the office. 看到他把高尔夫球袋拖进办公室，我就笑一笑。 来自辞典例句
• As a general guide, S＄1 should be adequate for baggage-lugging service. 一般的准则是，如有人帮你搬运行李，给一新元就够了。 来自互联网

85 slipper   

n.拖鞋

参考例句：

• I rescued the remains of my slipper from the dog.我从那狗的口中夺回了我拖鞋的残留部分。
• The puppy chewed a hole in the slipper.小狗在拖鞋上啃了一个洞。

86 slippers   

n. 拖鞋

参考例句：

• a pair of slippers 一双拖鞋
• He kicked his slippers off and dropped on to the bed. 他踢掉了拖鞋，倒在床上。

87 culling   

n.选择，大批物品中剔出劣质货v.挑选，剔除( cull的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The mathematicians turned to culling periodic solutions. 数学家们转而去挑选周期解。 来自辞典例句
• It took us a week to find you, a week of culling out prejudice and hatred. 我们花了一个星期的时间找到你们，把偏见和憎恨剔除出去。 来自演讲部分

88 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

89 swirl   

v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形

参考例句：

• The car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust.汽车在一股粉红色尘土的漩涡中颠簸着快速前进。
• You could lie up there,watching the flakes swirl past.你可以躺在那儿，看着雪花飘飘。

90 outgrown   

长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过

参考例句：

• She's already outgrown her school uniform. 她已经长得连校服都不能穿了。
• The boy has outgrown his clothes. 这男孩已长得穿不下他的衣服了。

91 vibrant   

adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的

参考例句：

• He always uses vibrant colours in his paintings. 他在画中总是使用鲜明的色彩。
• She gave a vibrant performance in the leading role in the school play.她在学校表演中生气盎然地扮演了主角。

92 liberating   

解放，释放( liberate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Revolution means liberating the productive forces. 革命就是为了解放生产力。
• They had already taken on their shoulders the burden of reforming society and liberating mankind. 甚至在这些集会聚谈中，他们就已经夸大地把改革社会、解放人群的责任放在自己的肩头了。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

93 doze   

v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐

参考例句：

• He likes to have a doze after lunch.他喜欢午饭后打个盹。
• While the adults doze,the young play.大人们在打瞌睡，而孩子们在玩耍。

94 outfit   

n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装

参考例句：

• Jenney bought a new outfit for her daughter's wedding.珍妮为参加女儿的婚礼买了一套新装。
• His father bought a ski outfit for him on his birthday.他父亲在他生日那天给他买了一套滑雪用具。

95 gilding   

n.贴金箔，镀金

参考例句：

• The dress is perfect. Don't add anything to it at all. It would just be gilding the lily. 这条裙子已经很完美了，别再作任何修饰了，那只会画蛇添足。
• The gilding is extremely lavish. 这层镀金极为奢华。

96 pros   

abbr.prosecuting 起诉；prosecutor 起诉人；professionals 自由职业者；proscenium （舞台）前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 )；赞成的理由；抵偿物；交换物

参考例句：

• The pros and cons cancel out. 正反两种意见抵消。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• We should hear all the pros and cons of the matter before we make a decision. 我们在对这事做出决定之前，应该先听取正反两方面的意见。 来自《简明英汉词典》

97 corpses   

n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The living soldiers put corpses together and burned them. 活着的战士把尸体放在一起烧了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Overhead, grayish-white clouds covered the sky, piling up heavily like decaying corpses. 天上罩满了灰白的薄云，同腐烂的尸体似的沉沉的盖在那里。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

98 lipstick   

n.口红，唇膏

参考例句：

• Taking out her lipstick,she began to paint her lips.她拿出口红，开始往嘴唇上抹。
• Lipstick and hair conditioner are cosmetics.口红和护发素都是化妆品。

99 outfits   

n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He jobbed out the contract to a number of small outfits. 他把承包工程分包给许多小单位。 来自辞典例句
• Some cyclists carry repair outfits because they may have a puncture. 有些骑自行车的人带修理工具，因为他们车胎可能小孔。 来自辞典例句

100 thong   

n.皮带；皮鞭；v.装皮带

参考例句：

• He fastened the dog to the post with a thong.他用一根皮带把狗拴到柱子上。
• If I switch with Harry,do I have to wear a thong?如果我和哈里调换，我应该穿皮带吗？

101 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

102 adolescence   

n.青春期，青少年

参考例句：

• Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。
• The film is about the trials and tribulations of adolescence.这部电影讲述了青春期的麻烦和苦恼。

103 blurry   

adj.模糊的；污脏的，污斑的

参考例句：

• My blurry vision makes it hard to drive. 我的视力有点模糊，使得开起车来相当吃力。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The lines are pretty blurry at this point. 界线在这个时候是很模糊的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

104 tolls   

（缓慢而有规律的）钟声( toll的名词复数 )； 通行费； 损耗； （战争、灾难等造成的）毁坏

参考例句：

• A man collected tolls at the gateway. 一个人在大门口收通行费。
• The long-distance call tolls amount to quite a sum. 长途电话费数目相当可观。

105 clairvoyant   

adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人

参考例句：

• Love is blind,but friendship is clairvoyant.爱是盲目的，友谊则能洞察一切。
• Those whom are clairvoyant have often come to understand past lives.那些能透视的人们已能经常理解死去的生命。

106 invincibility   

n.无敌，绝对不败

参考例句：

• The myth of his and Nazi invincibility had been completely destroyed. 过去他本人之神奇传说，以及纳粹之不败言论，至此乃完全破灭。 来自辞典例句
• Our image of invincibility evaporated. 我们战无不胜的形象化为泡影了。 来自辞典例句

107 omniscience   

n.全知，全知者，上帝

参考例句：

• Omniscience is impossible, but we be ready at all times, constantly studied. 无所不知是不可能，但我们应该时刻准备着，不断地进修学习。 来自互联网
• Thus, the argument concludes that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible. 因此，争论断定那个上帝和全能是逻辑地不兼容的。 来自互联网

108 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

109 distraction   

n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐

参考例句：

• Total concentration is required with no distractions.要全神贯注，不能有丝毫分神。
• Their national distraction is going to the disco.他们的全民消遣就是去蹦迪。

110 cubicle   

n.大房间中隔出的小室

参考例句：

• She studies in a cubicle in the school library.她在学校图书馆的小自习室里学习。
• A technical sergeant hunches in a cubicle.一位技术军士在一间小屋里弯腰坐着。

111 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

112 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

113 postscript   

n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明

参考例句：

• There was the usual romantic postscript at the end of his letter.他的信末又是一贯的浪漫附言。
• She mentioned in a postscript to her letter that the parcel had arrived.她在信末附笔中说包裹已寄到。

114 brewed   

调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡）

参考例句：

• The beer is brewed in the Czech Republic. 这种啤酒是在捷克共和国酿造的。
• The boy brewed a cup of coffee for his mother. 这男孩给他妈妈冲了一杯咖啡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

115 poker   

n.扑克；vt.烙制

参考例句：

• He was cleared out in the poker game.他打扑克牌，把钱都输光了。
• I'm old enough to play poker and do something with it.我打扑克是老手了，可以玩些花样。

116 flattened   

[医]（水）平扁的，弄平的

参考例句：

• She flattened her nose and lips against the window. 她把鼻子和嘴唇紧贴着窗户。
• I flattened myself against the wall to let them pass. 我身体紧靠着墙让他们通过。

117 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

118 moss   

n.苔，藓，地衣

参考例句：

• Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
• He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。

119 slurred   

含糊地说出( slur的过去式和过去分词 )； 含糊地发…的声； 侮辱； 连唱

参考例句：

• She had drunk too much and her speech was slurred. 她喝得太多了，话都说不利索了。
• You could tell from his slurred speech that he was drunk. 从他那含糊不清的话语中你就知道他喝醉了。

120 zipper   

n.拉链；v.拉上拉链

参考例句：

• The zipper is red.这条拉链是红色的。
• The zipper is a wonderful invention.拉链是个了不起的发明。

121 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。

122 zephyrs   

n.和风，微风( zephyr的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• If you but smile, spring zephyrs blow through my spirits, wondrously. 假使你只是仅仅对我微笑，春天的和风就会惊奇的吹过我的心灵间。 来自互联网

123 sewer   

n.排水沟，下水道

参考例句：

• They are tearing up the street to repair a sewer. 他们正挖开马路修下水道。
• The boy kicked a stone into the sewer. 那个男孩把一石子踢进了下水道。

124 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

125 gut   

n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏

参考例句：

• It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
• My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。

126 mused   

v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事）

参考例句：

• \"I wonder if I shall ever see them again, \"he mused. “我不知道是否还可以再见到他们，”他沉思自问。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• \"Where are we going from here?\" mused one of Rutherford's guests. 卢瑟福的一位客人忍不住说道：‘我们这是在干什么？” 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史

127 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

128 clenched   

v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He clenched his fists in anger. 他愤怒地攥紧了拳头。
• She clenched her hands in her lap to hide their trembling. 她攥紧双手放在腿上，以掩饰其颤抖。 来自《简明英汉词典》

129 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

130 groggy   

adj.体弱的；不稳的

参考例句：

• The attack of flu left her feeling very groggy.她患流感后非常虚弱。
• She was groggy from surgery.她手术后的的情况依然很不稳定。

131 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

132 hovered   

鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• A hawk hovered over the hill. 一只鹰在小山的上空翱翔。
• A hawk hovered in the blue sky. 一只老鹰在蓝色的天空中翱翔。

133 flannel   

n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服

参考例句：

• She always wears a grey flannel trousers.她总是穿一条灰色法兰绒长裤。
• She was looking luscious in a flannel shirt.她穿着法兰绒裙子，看上去楚楚动人。

134 cedar   

n.雪松，香柏(木)

参考例句：

• The cedar was about five feet high and very shapely.那棵雪松约有五尺高,风姿优美。
• She struck the snow from the branches of an old cedar with gray lichen.她把长有灰色地衣的老雪松树枝上的雪打了下来。

135 attic   

n.顶楼，屋顶室

参考例句：

• Leakiness in the roof caused a damp attic.屋漏使顶楼潮湿。
• What's to be done with all this stuff in the attic?顶楼上的材料怎么处理？

136 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

137 bleach   

vt.使漂白；vi.变白；n.漂白剂

参考例句：

• These products don't bleach the hair.这些产品不会使头发变白。
• Did you bleach this tablecloth?你把这块桌布漂白了吗？

138 leach   

v.分离，过滤掉；n.过滤；过滤器

参考例句：

• Liquid water can leach soluble materials from the interface.液态水能够从界面溶解出可溶性物质。
• They believe that the humic materials are leached from decaying plant materials.他们认为腐植物料是从腐烂的植物体浸沥而来。

139 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

140 inclination   

n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好

参考例句：

• She greeted us with a slight inclination of the head.她微微点头向我们致意。
• I did not feel the slightest inclination to hurry.我没有丝毫着急的意思。

141 sitcom   

n.情景喜剧，（广播、电视的）系列幽默剧

参考例句：

• This sitcom is produced in cooperation with Hong Kong TV.这部连续剧是同香港电视台联合制作的。
• I heard that a new sitcom is coming out next season.我听说下一季会推出一个新的情境喜剧。

142 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

143 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

144 persuasive   

adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的

参考例句：

• His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.他赞成办一座新学校的理由很有说服力。
• The evidence was not really persuasive enough.证据并不是太有说服力。

145 residue   

n.残余，剩余，残渣

参考例句：

• Mary scraped the residue of food from the plates before putting them under water.玛丽在把盘子放入水之前先刮去上面的食物残渣。
• Pesticide persistence beyond the critical period for control leads to residue problems.农药一旦超过控制的临界期，就会导致残留问题。

146 prescription   

n.处方，开药；指示，规定

参考例句：

• The physician made a prescription against sea- sickness for him.医生给他开了个治晕船的药方。
• The drug is available on prescription only.这种药只能凭处方购买。

147 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

148 poking   

n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• He was poking at the rubbish with his stick. 他正用手杖拨动垃圾。
• He spent his weekends poking around dusty old bookshops. 他周末都泡在布满尘埃的旧书店里。

149 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

150 loomed   

v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• A dark shape loomed up ahead of us. 一个黑糊糊的影子隐隐出现在我们的前面。
• The prospect of war loomed large in everyone's mind. 战事将起的庞大阴影占据每个人的心。 来自《简明英汉词典》

151 riddle   

n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜

参考例句：

• The riddle couldn't be solved by the child.这个谜语孩子猜不出来。
• Her disappearance is a complete riddle.她的失踪完全是一个谜。

152 charcoal   

n.炭，木炭，生物炭

参考例句：

• We need to get some more charcoal for the barbecue.我们烧烤需要更多的碳。
• Charcoal is used to filter water.木炭是用来过滤水的。

153 riddles   

n.谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 )；猜不透的难题，难解之谜

参考例句：

• Few riddles collected from oral tradition, however, have all six parts. 但是据收集的情况看，口头流传的谜语很少具有这完整的六部分。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗
• But first, you'd better see if you can answer riddles. 但是你首先最好想想你会不会猜谜语。 来自辞典例句

154 notched   

a.有凹口的，有缺口的

参考例句：

• Torino notched up a 2-1 win at Lazio. 都灵队以2 比1 赢了拉齐奧队。
• He notched up ten points in the first five minutes of the game. 他在比赛开始后的五分钟里得了十分。

155 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

156 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。

157 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

158 interim   

adj.暂时的，临时的；n.间歇，过渡期间

参考例句：

• The government is taking interim measures to help those in immediate need.政府正在采取临时措施帮助那些有立即需要的人。
• It may turn out to be an interim technology.这可能只是个过渡技术。

159 grunted   

（猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说

参考例句：

• She just grunted, not deigning to look up from the page. 她只咕哝了一声，继续看书，不屑抬起头来看一眼。
• She grunted some incomprehensible reply. 她咕噜着回答了些令人费解的话。

160 inhaled   

v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. 她合上双眼，深深吸了一口气。
• Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him. 珍妮特看到他时猛地吸了口气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

161 skidded   

v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的过去式和过去分词 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区

参考例句：

• The car skidded and hit a lamp post. 那辆汽车打滑撞上了路灯杆。
• The car skidded and overturned. 汽车打滑翻倒了。

162 scrambling   

v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Scrambling up her hair, she darted out of the house. 她匆忙扎起头发，冲出房去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She is scrambling eggs. 她正在炒蛋。 来自《简明英汉词典》

163 scent   

n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉

参考例句：

• The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
• The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。

164 alcoholic   

adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者

参考例句：

• The alcoholic strength of brandy far exceeds that of wine.白兰地的酒精浓度远远超过葡萄酒。
• Alcoholic drinks act as a poison to a child.酒精饮料对小孩犹如毒药。

165 spool   

n.（缠录音带等的）卷盘（轴）；v.把…绕在卷轴上

参考例句：

• Can you wind this film back on to its spool?你能把这胶卷卷回到卷轴上去吗？
• Thomas squatted on the forward deck,whistling tunelessly,polishing the broze spool of the anchor winch.托马斯蹲在前甲板上擦起锚绞车的黄铜轴，边擦边胡乱吹着口哨。

166 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

167 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。

168 shrugged   

vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀，什么也没说。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

169 antiquated   

adj.陈旧的，过时的

参考例句：

• Many factories are so antiquated they are not worth saving.很多工厂过于陈旧落后，已不值得挽救。
• A train of antiquated coaches was waiting for us at the siding.一列陈旧的火车在侧线上等着我们。

170 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。

171 civilized   

a.有教养的，文雅的

参考例句：

• Racism is abhorrent to a civilized society. 文明社会憎恶种族主义。
• rising crime in our so-called civilized societies 在我们所谓文明社会中日益增多的犯罪行为

172 ornament   

v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物

参考例句：

• The flowers were put on the table for ornament.花放在桌子上做装饰用。
• She wears a crystal ornament on her chest.她的前胸戴了一个水晶饰品。

173 suffocating   

a.使人窒息的

参考例句：

• After a few weeks with her parents, she felt she was suffocating.和父母呆了几个星期后，她感到自己毫无自由。
• That's better. I was suffocating in that cell of a room.这样好些了，我刚才在那个小房间里快闷死了。

174 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

175 prosecution   

n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营

参考例句：

• The Smiths brought a prosecution against the organizers.史密斯家对组织者们提出起诉。
• He attempts to rebut the assertion made by the prosecution witness.他试图反驳原告方证人所作的断言。

176 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。

177 denim   

n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤

参考例句：

• She wore pale blue denim shorts and a white denim work shirt.她穿着一条淡蓝色的斜纹粗棉布短裤，一件白粗布工作服上衣。
• Dennis was dressed in denim jeans.丹尼斯穿了一条牛仔裤。

178 contrition   

n.悔罪，痛悔

参考例句：

• The next day he'd be full of contrition,weeping and begging forgiveness.第二天，他就会懊悔不已，哭着乞求原谅。
• She forgave him because his contrition was real.她原谅了他是由于他的懊悔是真心的。

179 locker   

n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人

参考例句：

• At the swimming pool I put my clothes in a locker.在游泳池我把衣服锁在小柜里。
• He moved into the locker room and began to slip out of his scrub suit.他走进更衣室把手术服脱下来。

180 dual   

adj.双的；二重的，二元的

参考例句：

• The people's Republic of China does not recognize dual nationality for any Chinese national.中华人民共和国不承认中国公民具有双重国籍。
• He has dual role as composer and conductor.他兼作曲家及指挥的双重身分。

181 speculation   

n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机

参考例句：

• Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
• There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。

182 pegs   

n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平

参考例句：

• She hung up the shirt with two (clothes) pegs. 她用两只衣夹挂上衬衫。 来自辞典例句
• The vice-presidents were all square pegs in round holes. 各位副总裁也都安排得不得其所。 来自辞典例句

183 vengeance   

n.报复，报仇，复仇

参考例句：

• He swore vengeance against the men who murdered his father.他发誓要向那些杀害他父亲的人报仇。
• For years he brooded vengeance.多年来他一直在盘算报仇。

184 shaft   

n.(工具的)柄，杆状物

参考例句：

• He was wounded by a shaft.他被箭击中受伤。
• This is the shaft of a steam engine.这是一个蒸汽机主轴。

185 tightened   

收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧

参考例句：

• The rope holding the boat suddenly tightened and broke. 系船的绳子突然绷断了。
• His index finger tightened on the trigger but then relaxed again. 他的食指扣住扳机，然后又松开了。

186 fortress   

n.堡垒，防御工事

参考例句：

• They made an attempt on a fortress.他们试图夺取这一要塞。
• The soldier scaled the wall of the fortress by turret.士兵通过塔车攀登上了要塞的城墙。

187 unwilling   

adj.不情愿的

参考例句：

• The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
• His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。

188 bog   

n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖

参考例句：

• We were able to pass him a rope before the bog sucked him under.我们终于得以在沼泽把他吞没前把绳子扔给他。
• The path goes across an area of bog.这条小路穿过一片沼泽。

189 gash   

v.深切，划开；n.(深长的)切(伤)口；裂缝

参考例句：

• The deep gash in his arm would take weeks to heal over.他胳膊上的割伤很深，需要几个星期的时间才能痊愈。
• After the collision,the body of the ship had a big gash.船被撞后，船身裂开了一个大口子。

190 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

191 custody   

n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留

参考例句：

• He spent a week in custody on remand awaiting sentence.等候判决期间他被还押候审一个星期。
• He was taken into custody immediately after the robbery.抢劫案发生后，他立即被押了起来。

192 ethical   

adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。

193 juvenile   

n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的

参考例句：

• For a grown man he acted in a very juvenile manner.身为成年人，他的行为举止显得十分幼稚。
• Juvenile crime is increasing at a terrifying rate.青少年犯罪正在以惊人的速度增长。

194 frivolous   

adj.轻薄的；轻率的

参考例句：

• This is a frivolous way of attacking the problem.这是一种轻率敷衍的处理问题的方式。
• He spent a lot of his money on frivolous things.他在一些无聊的事上花了好多钱。

195 squeaked   

v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者

参考例句：

• The radio squeaked five. 收音机里嘟嘟地发出五点钟报时讯号。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Amy's shoes squeaked on the tiles as she walked down the corridor. 埃米走过走廊时，鞋子踩在地砖上嘎吱作响。 来自辞典例句

196 cuff   

n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口

参考例句：

• She hoped they wouldn't cuff her hands behind her back.她希望他们不要把她反铐起来。
• Would you please draw together the snag in my cuff?请你把我袖口上的裂口缝上好吗？

197 soften   

v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和

参考例句：

• Plastics will soften when exposed to heat.塑料适当加热就可以软化。
• This special cream will help to soften up our skin.这种特殊的护肤霜有助于使皮肤变得柔软。

198 defendant   

n.被告；adj.处于被告地位的

参考例句：

• The judge rejected a bribe from the defendant's family.法官拒收被告家属的贿赂。
• The defendant was borne down by the weight of evidence.有力的证据使被告认输了。

199 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

200 steer   

vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶

参考例句：

• If you push the car, I'll steer it.如果你来推车，我就来驾车。
• It's no use trying to steer the boy into a course of action that suits you.想说服这孩子按你的方式行事是徒劳的。

201 mandatory   

adj.命令的；强制的；义务的；n.受托者

参考例句：

• It's mandatory to pay taxes.缴税是义务性的。
• There is no mandatory paid annual leave in the U.S.美国没有强制带薪年假。

202 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

203 folder   

n.纸夹，文件夹

参考例句：

• Peter returned the plan and charts to their folder.彼得把这份计划和表格放回文件夹中。
• He draws the document from its folder.他把文件从硬纸夹里抽出来。

204 adjourned   

（使）休会， （使）休庭( adjourn的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The court adjourned for lunch. 午餐时间法庭休庭。
• The trial was adjourned following the presentation of new evidence to the court. 新证据呈到庭上后，审讯就宣告暂停。

205 aisle   

n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道

参考例句：

• The aisle was crammed with people.过道上挤满了人。
• The girl ushered me along the aisle to my seat.引座小姐带领我沿着通道到我的座位上去。

206 sobbing   

&lt;主方&gt;Ⅰ adj.湿透的

参考例句：

• I heard a child sobbing loudly. 我听见有个孩子在呜呜地哭。
• Her eyes were red with recent sobbing. 她的眼睛因刚哭过而发红。

207 battalion   

n.营；部队；大队(的人)

参考例句：

• The town was garrisoned by a battalion.该镇由一营士兵驻守。
• At the end of the drill parade,the battalion fell out.操练之后，队伍解散了。

208 flare   

v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发

参考例句：

• The match gave a flare.火柴发出闪光。
• You need not flare up merely because I mentioned your work.你大可不必因为我提到你的工作就动怒。

209 sarcastically   

adv.挖苦地，讽刺地

参考例句：

• 'What a surprise!' Caroline murmured sarcastically.“太神奇了!”卡罗琳轻声挖苦道。
• Pierce mocked her and bowed sarcastically. 皮尔斯嘲笑她，讽刺地鞠了一躬。

210 contemplate   

vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视

参考例句：

• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate.战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。
• The consequences would be too ghastly to contemplate.后果不堪设想。

211 shortcut   

n.近路，捷径

参考例句：

• He was always looking for a shortcut to fame and fortune.他总是在找成名发财的捷径。
• If you take the shortcut,it will be two li closer.走抄道去要近2里路。

212 referees   

n.裁判员( referee的名词复数 )；证明人；公断人；（专业性强的文章的）审阅人

参考例句：

• The fiery player has had numerous run-ins with referees. 这位脾气暴躁的队员曾和裁判员发生过无数次争吵。
• If you want to appeal, the Court of Referees will decide. 如果你要上诉，可以由仲裁法庭去判决。 来自辞典例句

213 hamper   

vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子

参考例句：

• There are some apples in a picnic hamper.在野餐用的大篮子里有许多苹果。
• The emergence of such problems seriously hamper the development of enterprises.这些问题的出现严重阻碍了企业的发展。

214 overflows   

v.溢出，淹没( overflow的第三人称单数 )；充满；挤满了人；扩展出界，过度延伸

参考例句：

• He always fills his glass till it overflows. 他总是把杯子斟得很满。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A distributary overflows its banks. 分流水溢出河岸。 来自辞典例句

215 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

216 haven   

n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所

参考例句：

• It's a real haven at the end of a busy working day.忙碌了一整天后，这真是一个安乐窝。
• The school library is a little haven of peace and quiet.学校的图书馆是一个和平且安静的小避风港。

217 domain   

n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围

参考例句：

• This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
• This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。

218 snug   

adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房

参考例句：

• He showed us into a snug little sitting room.他领我们走进了一间温暖而舒适的小客厅。
• She had a small but snug home.她有个小小的但很舒适的家。

219 penguin   

n.企鹅

参考例句：

• The penguin is a flightless bird.企鹅是一种不会飞的鸟。
• He walked with an awkward gait like a penguin.他走路的步子难看得就像企鹅。

220 lighter   

n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级

参考例句：

• The portrait was touched up so as to make it lighter.这张画经过润色，色调明朗了一些。
• The lighter works off the car battery.引燃器利用汽车蓄电池打火。

221 naive   

adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的

参考例句：

• It's naive of you to believe he'll do what he says.相信他会言行一致，你未免太单纯了。
• Don't be naive.The matter is not so simple.你别傻乎乎的。事情没有那么简单。

222 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

223 immutable   

adj.不可改变的，永恒的

参考例句：

• Nothing in the world is immutable.世界没有一成不变的东西。
• They free our minds from considering our world as fixed and immutable.它们改变着人们将世界看作是永恒不变的观点。

224 salon   

n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室

参考例句：

• Do you go to the hairdresser or beauty salon more than twice a week?你每周去美容院或美容沙龙多过两次吗？
• You can hear a lot of dirt at a salon.你在沙龙上会听到很多流言蜚语。

225 catered   

提供饮食及服务( cater的过去式和过去分词 )； 满足需要，适合

参考例句：

• We catered for forty but only twenty came. 我们准备了40客饭菜，但只来了20个人。
• They catered for everyone regardless of social rank. 他们为所有人服务而不计较其社会地位。

226 wigs   

n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They say that wigs will be coming in again this year. 据说今年又要流行戴假发了。 来自辞典例句
• Frank, we needed more wigs than we thought, and we have to do some advertising. 弗兰克，因为我们需要更多的假发，而且我们还要做点广告。 来自电影对白

227 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

228 alias   

n.化名；别名；adv.又名

参考例句：

• His real name was Johnson,but he often went by the alias of Smith.他的真名是约翰逊，但是他常常用化名史密斯。
• You can replace this automatically generated alias with a more meaningful one.可用更有意义的名称替换这一自动生成的别名。

229 faltered   

（嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃

参考例句：

• He faltered out a few words. 他支吾地说出了几句。
• "Er - but he has such a longhead!" the man faltered. 他不好意思似的嚅嗫着：“这孩子脑袋真长。”

230 buffer   

n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲

参考例句：

• A little money can be a useful buffer in time of need.在急需时，很少一点钱就能解燃眉之急。
• Romantic love will buffer you against life's hardships.浪漫的爱会减轻生活的艰辛。

231 mattress   

n.床垫，床褥

参考例句：

• The straw mattress needs to be aired.草垫子该晾一晾了。
• The new mattress I bought sags in the middle.我买的新床垫中间陷了下去。

232 sporadically   

adv.偶发地，零星地

参考例句：

• There are some trees sporadically around his house. 他的房子周围零星地有点树木。 来自辞典例句
• As for other aspects, we will sporadically hand out questionnaires. 在其他方面，我们会偶尔发送调查问卷。 来自互联网

233 hatchet   

n.短柄小斧；v.扼杀

参考例句：

• I shall have to take a hatchet to that stump.我得用一把短柄斧来劈这树桩。
• Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.别用斧头拍打朋友额头上的苍蝇。

234 meted   

v.（对某人）施以，给予（处罚等）( mete的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The severe punishment was meted out to the unruly hooligan. 对那个嚣张的流氓已给予严厉惩处。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The money was meted out only after it had been carefully counted. 钱只有仔细点过之后才分发。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

235 aluminum   

n.(aluminium)铝

参考例句：

• The aluminum sheets cannot be too much thicker than 0.04 inches.铝板厚度不能超过0.04英寸。
• During the launch phase,it would ride in a protective aluminum shell.在发射阶段，它盛在一只保护的铝壳里。

236 huddled   

挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
• We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。

237 willows   

n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木

参考例句：

• The willows along the river bank look very beautiful. 河岸边的柳树很美。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Willows are planted on both sides of the streets. 街道两侧种着柳树。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

238 brindled   

adj.有斑纹的

参考例句：

• I saw his brindled cow feeding on fish remnants.我看见他的用鱼杂碎喂养的斑纹奶牛。
• He had one brindled eye that sometimes made him look like a clown.他一只眼睛上有块花斑，这使得他有时看上去活象个小丑。

239 superstition   

n.迷信，迷信行为

参考例句：

• It's a common superstition that black cats are unlucky.认为黑猫不吉祥是一种很普遍的迷信。
• Superstition results from ignorance.迷信产生于无知。

240 vow   

n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓

参考例句：

• My parents are under a vow to go to church every Sunday.我父母许愿，每星期日都去做礼拜。
• I am under a vow to drink no wine.我已立誓戒酒。

241 scorched   

烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦

参考例句：

• I scorched my dress when I was ironing it. 我把自己的连衣裙熨焦了。
• The hot iron scorched the tablecloth. 热熨斗把桌布烫焦了。

242 mirage   

n.海市蜃楼，幻景

参考例句：

• Perhaps we are all just chasing a mirage.也许我们都只是在追逐一个幻想。
• Western liberalism was always a mirage.西方自由主义永远是一座海市蜃楼。

243 tattoo   

n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于

参考例句：

• I've decided to get my tattoo removed.我已经决定去掉我身上的纹身。
• He had a tattoo on the back of his hand.他手背上刺有花纹。

244 pricked   

刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛

参考例句：

• The cook pricked a few holes in the pastry. 厨师在馅饼上戳了几个洞。
• He was pricked by his conscience. 他受到良心的谴责。

245 provocation   

n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因

参考例句：

• He's got a fiery temper and flares up at the slightest provocation.他是火爆性子，一点就着。
• They did not react to this provocation.他们对这一挑衅未作反应。

246 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。

247 softened   

（使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰

参考例句：

• His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
• The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。

248 seeped   

v.（液体）渗( seep的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出

参考例句：

• The rain seeped through the roof. 雨水透过房顶渗透。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Icy air seeped in through the paper and the room became cold. 寒气透过了糊窗纸。屋里骤然冷起来。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

249 thicket   

n.灌木丛，树林

参考例句：

• A thicket makes good cover for animals to hide in.丛林是动物的良好隐蔽处。
• We were now at the margin of the thicket.我们现在已经来到了丛林的边缘。

250 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

251 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。

252 conserving   

v.保护，保藏，保存( conserve的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Contour planning with or without terracing is effective in conserving both soil and moisture. 顺等高线栽植，无论做或不做梯田对于保持水土都能有效。 来自辞典例句
• Economic savings, consistent with a conserving society and the public philosophy. 经济节约，符合创建节约型社会的公共理念。 来自互联网

253 tugged   

v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She tugged at his sleeve to get his attention. 她拽了拽他的袖子引起他的注意。
• A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. 他的嘴角带一丝苦笑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

254 navigated   

v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的过去式和过去分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃

参考例句：

• He navigated the plane through the clouds. 他驾驶飞机穿越云层。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The ship was navigated by the North Star. 那只船靠北极星来导航。 来自《简明英汉词典》

255 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

256 bracing   

adj.令人振奋的

参考例句：

• The country is bracing itself for the threatened enemy invasion. 这个国家正准备奋起抵抗敌人的入侵威胁。
• The atmosphere in the new government was bracing. 新政府的气氛是令人振奋的。

257 bully   

n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮

参考例句：

• A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
• The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。

258 imbue   

v.灌输(某种强烈的情感或意见)，感染

参考例句：

• He managed to imbue his employees with team spirit.他成功激发起雇员的团队精神。
• Kass is trying to imbue physics into simulated worlds.凯斯想要尝试的就是把物理学引入模拟世界。

259 wavy   

adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的

参考例句：

• She drew a wavy line under the word.她在这个词的下面画了一条波纹线。
• His wavy hair was too long and flopped just beneath his brow.他的波浪式头发太长了，正好垂在他的眉毛下。

260 hopping   

n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The clubs in town are really hopping. 城里的俱乐部真够热闹的。
• I'm hopping over to Paris for the weekend. 我要去巴黎度周末。

261 pickup   

n.拾起，获得

参考例句：

• I would love to trade this car for a pickup truck.我愿意用这辆汽车换一辆小型轻便卡车。||The luck guy is a choice pickup for the girls.那位幸运的男孩是女孩子们想勾搭上的人。