2002
KATE MEETS TAYLOR AMBROSE when they are sitting side by side, hooked up to IVs. “What are you herefor?” she asks, and I immediately look up from my book, because in all the years that Kate has beenreceiving outpatient treatment I cannot remember her initiating1 a conversation.
The boy she is talking to is not much older than she is, maybe sixteen to her fourteen. He has brown eyes thatdance, and is wearing a Bruins cap over his bald head. “The free cocktails,” he answers, and the dimples inhis cheeks deepen.
Kate grins. “Happy hour,” she says, and she looks up at the bag of platelets being infused into her.
“I’m Taylor.” He holds out his hand. “AML.”
“Kate. APL.”
He whistles, and raises his brows. “Ooh,” he says. “A rarity.”
Kate tosses her cropped hair. “Aren’t we all?”
I watch this, amazed. Who is this flirt2, and what has she done with my little girl?
“Platelets,” he says, scrutinizing3 the label on her IV bag. “You’re in remission?”
“Today, anyway.” Kate glances at his pole, the telltale black bag that covers the Cytoxan. “Chemo?”
“Yeah. Today, anyway. So, Kate,” Taylor says. He has that rangy puppy look of a sixteen-year-old, one withknobby knees and thick fingers and cheekbones he hasn’t yet grown into. When he crosses his arms, themuscles swell4. I realize he’s doing this on purpose, and I duck my head to hide a smile. “What do you dowhen you’re not at Providence5 Hospital?”
She thinks, and then a slow smile lights her up from the inside out. “Wait for something that makes me comeback.”
This makes Taylor laugh out loud. “Maybe sometime we can wait together,” he says, and he passes her awrapper from a gauze pad. “Can I have your phone number?”
Kate scribbles6 it down as Taylor’s IV begins to beep. The nurse comes in and unhooks his line. “You’re outtahere, Taylor,” she says. “Where’s your ride?”
“Waiting downstairs. I’m all set.” He gets out of the padded chair slowly, almost weakly, the first reminderthat this is not some casual conversation. He slips the piece of paper with our phone number into his pocket.
“Well, I’ll call you, Kate.”
When he leaves Kate lets all her breath out in a dramatic finish. She rolls her head after him. “Oh my God,”
she gasps7. “He is gorgeous.”
The nurse, checking her flow, grins. “Tell me about it, honey. If only I were thirty years younger.”
Kate turns to me, blooming. “You think he’ll call?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Where do you think we’ll go out?”
I think of Brian, who has always said that Kate can date…when she’s forty. “Let’s take one step at a time,” Isuggest. But inside, I am singing.
spaceThe arsenic8, which ultimately put Kate into remission, worked its magic by wearing her down. TaylorAmbrose, a drug of an entirely9 different sort, works his magic by building her up. It becomes a habit: whenthe phone rings at seven P.M., Kate flies from the dinner table and hides in a closet with the portable receiver.
The rest of us clear the dinner plates and spend time in the living room and get ready for bed, hearing littlemore than giggles10 and whispers, and then Kate emerges from her cocoon11, flushed and glowing, first lovebeating like a hummingbird12 at the pulse in her throat. Every time it happens, I can’t stop staring. It is not thatKate is so beautiful, although she is; it’s that I never really let myself believe that I would see her all grownup.
I follow her into the bathroom one night, after one of her marathon phone sessions. Kate stares at herself inthe mirror, pursing her lips and raising her brows in a come-hither pose. Her hand comes up to her croppedhair—after the chemo, it never grew back in waves, just thick straight tufts that she usually cultivates withmousse to look like bedhead. She holds her palm out, as if she still expects to see hair shedding.
“What do you think he sees when he looks at me?” Kate asks.
I come to stand behind her. She is not the child that mirrors me—that would be Jesse—and yet when you putus side by side, there are definite similarities. It’s not in the shape of the mouth but the set of it, the sheerdetermination that silvers our eyes.
“I think he sees a girl who knows what he’s been through,” I tell her honestly.
“I got on the internet and read up on AML,” she says. “His leukemia’s got a pretty high cure rate.” She turnsto me. “When you care more if someone else lives than you do about yourself…is that what love’s like?”
It is hard, all of a sudden, to pull an answer through the tunnel of my throat. “Exactly.”
Kate runs the tap and washes her face with a foam13 of soap. I hand her a towel, and as she rises from the cloudof it, she says, “Something bad’s going to happen.”
On alert, I search her out for clues. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. But that’s the way it works. If there’s something as good as Taylor in my life, I’m going to pay forit.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say out of habit, yet there is a truth to this. Anyone whobelieves that people have ultimate control of what life hands to them needs only to spend a day in the shoesof a child with leukemia. Or her mother. “Maybe you’re finally getting a break,” I say.
Three days later, during a routine CBC, the hematologist tells us that Kate is once again throwingpromyelocytes, the first slide down a steep slope of relapse.
I have never eavesdropped14, at least not intentionally15, until the night that Kate comes back from her first datewith Taylor, to see a movie. She tiptoes into her room and sits down on Anna’s bed. “You awake?” she asks.
Anna rolls over, groans16. “I am now.” Sleep slips away from her, like a shawl falling to the floor. “How wasit?”
“Wow,” Kate says, and she laughs. “Wow.”
“How wow? Like, tonsil hockey wow?”
“You are so disgusting,” Kate whispers, although there’s a smile behind it. “But he is a really good kisser.”
She dangles17 this like a fisherman.
“Get out!” Anna’s voice shines. “So what was it like?”
“Flying,” Kate answers. “I bet it feels just the same way.”
“I don’t get what that has in common with someone slobbering all over you.”
“God, Anna, it’s not like he spits on you.”
“What does Taylor taste like?”
“Popcorn.” She laughs. “And guy.”
“How did you know what to do?”
“I didn’t. It just kind of happened. Like the way you play hockey.”
This, finally, makes sense to Anna. “Well,” she says, “I do feel pretty good when I’m doing that.”
“You have no idea,” Kate sighs. There is some movement; I imagine her stripping off her clothes. I wonder ifTaylor is imagining the same, somewhere.
Pillow is punched, cover yanked back, sheets rustle18 as Kate gets into bed and rolls onto her side. “Anna?”
“Hmm?”
“He has scars on his palms, from graft-versus-host,” Kate murmurs19. “I could feel them when we wereholding hands.”
“Was it gross?”
“No,” she says. “It was like we matched.”
At first, I can’t get Kate to agree to undergo the peripheral20 blood stem cell transplant. She refuses becauseshe doesn’t want to be hospitalized for chemo, doesn’t want to have to sit in reverse isolation21 for the next sixweeks when she could be going out with Taylor Ambrose. “It’s your life,” I point out to her, and she looks atme as if I’m crazy.
“Exactly,” she says.
In the end, we compromise. The oncology team agrees to let Kate begin her chemo as an outpatient, inpreparation for a transplant from Anna. At home, she agrees to wear a mask. At the first indication of hercounts dropping, she’ll be hospitalized. They aren’t happy; they worry it will affect the procedure, but likeme they also understand that Kate has reached the age where she can bargain with her will.
As it turns out, this separation anxiety is all for naught22, since Taylor shows up for Kate’s first outpatientchemo appointment. “What are you doing here?”
“I can’t seem to stay away,” he jokes. “Hey, Mrs. Fitzgerald.” He sits down beside Kate in the emptyadjoining chair. “God, it feels good to be in one of these without an IV hookup.”
“Rub it in,” Kate mutters.
Taylor puts his hand on her arm. “How far into it are you?”
“Just started.”
He gets up and sits on the wide arm of Kate’s chair, picks the emesis basin up from Kate’s lap. “A hundredbucks says you can’t make it till three without tossing your cookies.”
Kate glances at the clock. It is 2:50. “You’re on.”
“What did you have for lunch?” He grins, wicked. “Or should I guess based on the colors?”
“You’re disgusting,” Kate says, but her smile is as wide as the sea. Taylor puts his hand on her shoulder. Sheleans into the contact.
The first time Brian touched me, he saved my life. There had been cataclysmic downpours in Providence, anor’easter that swelled23 the tides and put the parking lot at the courthouse entirely underwater. I was clerkingthen, when we were evacuated24. Brian’s department was in charge; I walked onto the stone steps of thebuilding to see cars floating by, and abandoned purses, and even a terrified paddling dog. While I had beenfiling briefs, the world I knew had been submerged. “Need a hand?” Brian asked, dressed in his full turnoutgear, and he held out his arms. As he swam me to higher ground, rain struck my face and pelted25 my back. Iwondered how—in a deluge—I could feel like I was being burned alive.
“What’s the longest you’ve ever gone before throwing up?” Kate asks Taylor.
“Two days.”
“Get out.”
The nurse glances up from her paperwork. “True,” she confirms. “I saw it with my own eyes.”
Taylor grins at her. “I told you, I’m a master at this.” He looks at the clock: 2:57.
“Don’t you have anywhere else you’d rather be?” Kate says.
“Trying to weasel out of the bet?”
“Trying to spare you. Although—” Before she can finish, she goes green. Both the nurse and I rise from oursseats, but Taylor reaches Kate first. He holds the vomit26 basin beneath her chin and when she starts retching,he rubs his hand in slow circles on her upper back.
“It’s okay,” he soothes27, close to her temple.
The nurse and I exchange glances. “Looks like she’s in good hands,” the nurse says, and she leaves to takecare of another patient.
When Kate is finished, Taylor puts the basin aside and wipes her mouth with a tissue. She looks up at him,glow-eyed and flushed, her nose still running. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“For what?” Taylor says. “Tomorrow, it could be me.”
I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up—as if it isimpossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing inlazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn’t it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sanddollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that’s holding a boy’s; wasn’t it just holding mine,tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments shewanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion—never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You wouldassume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousandthings to learn.
“I’m some fun date,” Kate murmurs.
Taylor smiles at her. “Fries,” he says. “For lunch.”
Kate smacks28 his shoulder. “You are disgusting.”
He raises one brow. “You lost the bet, you know.”
“I seem to have left my trust fund at home.”
Taylor pretends to study her. “OK, I know what you can give me instead.”
“Sexual favors?” Kate says, forgetting I am here.
“Gee, I don’t know,” Taylor laughs. “Should we ask your mom?”
She goes plum-red. “Oops.”
“Keep this up,” I warn, “and your next date will be during a bone marrow29 aspiration30.”
“You know the hospital has this dance, right?” Suddenly, Taylor is jittery31; his knee bobs up and down. “It’sfor kids who are sick. There are doctors and nurses there, in case, and it’s held in one of the conference roomsat the hospital, but for the most part it’s just like a regular prom. You know, lame32 band, ugly tuxes, punchspiked with platelets.” He swallows. “I’m just kidding about that last part. Well, I went last year, stag, and itwas pretty dumb, but I figure since you’re a patient and I’m a patient maybe this year we could, like, gotogether.”
Kate, with an aplomb33 I never would have guessed she possesses, considers the offer. “When is it?”
“Saturday.”
“As it turns out, I don’t have plans to kick the bucket that day.” She beams at him. “I’d love to.”
“Cool,” Taylor says, smiling. “Very cool.” He reaches for a fresh basin, careful of Kate’s IV line, whichsnakes down between them. I wonder if her heart is pumping faster, if it will affect the medication. If she’llbe sicker, sooner rather than later.
Taylor settles Kate into the crook34 of his arm. Together, they wait for what comes next.
“It’s too low,” I say, as Kate holds a pale yellow dress up below her neck. From the spot on the boutique floorwhere she is sitting, Anna offers up her opinion, too: “You’d look like a banana.”
We have been shopping for a prom dress for hours. Kate has only two days to prepare for this dance, and ithas become an obsession35: what she will wear, how she will do her makeup36, if the band is going to playanything remotely decent. Her hair, of course, is not an issue; after chemo she lost it all. She hates wigs—they feel like bugs37 on her scalp, she says—but she’s too self-conscious to go commando. Today, she haswrapped a batik scarf around her head, like a proud, pale African queen.
The reality of this outing hasn’t matched Kate’s dreams. Dresses that normal girls wear to proms bare themidriff or shoulders, where Kate’s skin is riddled38 and thickened with scarring. They cling in all the wrongplaces. They are cut to showcase a healthy, hale body, not to hide the lack of it.
The saleswoman who hovers39 like a hummingbird takes the dress from Kate. “It’s actually quite modest,” shepushes. “It really does cover up a fair amount of cleavage.”
“Will it cover this?” Kate snaps, popping open the buttons of her peasant blouse to reveal her recentlyreplaced Hickman catheter, which sprouts40 from the center of her chest.
The saleswoman gasps before she can remember to stop herself. “Oh,” she says faintly.
“Kate!” I scold.
She shakes her head. “Let’s just get out of here.”
As soon as we are on the street in front of the boutique I lace into her. “Just because you’re angry, you don’thave to take it out on the rest of the world.”
“Well, she’s a bitch,” Kate retorts. “Did you see her looking at my scarf?”
“Maybe she just liked the pattern,” I say dryly.
“Yeah, and maybe I’m going to wake up tomorrow and not be sick.” Her words fall like boulders41 between us,cracking the sidewalk. “I’m not going to find a stupid dress. I don’t know why I even told Taylor I’d go in thefirst place.”
“Don’t you think every other girl who’s going to that dance is in the same boat? Trying to find gowns thatcover up tubes and bruises42 and wires and colostomy bags and God knows what?”
“I don’t care about anyone else,” Kate says. “I wanted to look good. Really good, you know, for one night.”
“Taylor already thinks you’re beautiful.”
“Well I don’t!” Kate cries. “I don’t, Mom, and maybe I want to just once.”
It is a warm day, one where the ground beneath our feet seems to be breathing. The sun beats down on myhead, on the back of my neck. What do I say to that? I have never been Kate. I have prayed and begged andwanted to be the one who’s sick in lieu of her, some devil’s Faustian bargain, but that is not the way it’shappened.
“We’ll sew something,” I suggest. “You can design it.”
“You don’t know how to sew,” Kate sighs.
“I’ll learn.”
“In a day?” She shakes her head. “You can’t fix it every time, Mom. How come I know that, and you don’t?”
She leaves me on the sidewalk and storms off. Anna runs after her, loops her arm through Kate’s elbow, anddrags her into a store-front a few feet away from the boutique, while I hurry to catch up.
It is a salon43, filled with gum-cracking hairstylists. Kate is struggling to get away from Anna, but Anna, shecan be strong when she wants to be. “Hey,” Anna says, getting the attention of the receptionist. “Do you workhere?”
“When I’m forced to.”
“You guys do prom hairstyles?”
“Sure,” the stylist says. “Like an updo?”
“Yeah. For my sister.” Anna looks at Kate, who has stopped fighting. A smile glows slowly across her face,like a firefly caught in a jelly jar.
“That’s right. For me,” Kate says mischievously44, and she unwinds the scarf from her bald head.
Everyone in the salon stops speaking. Kate stands regally straight. “We were thinking of French braids,”
Anna continues.
“A perm,” Kate adds.
Anna giggles. “Maybe a nice chignon.”
The stylist swallows, caught between shock and sympathy and political correctness. “Well, um, we might beable to do something for you.” She clears her throat. “There’s always, you know, extensions.”
“Extensions,” Anna repeats, and Kate bursts out laughing.
The stylist begins to look behind the girls, toward the ceiling. “Is this like a Candid45 Camera thing?”
At that, my daughters collapse46 into each other’s arms, hysterical47. They laugh until they cannot catch theirbreath. They laugh until they cry.
As a chaperone at the Providence Hospital Prom, I am in charge of the punch. Like every other food itemprovided for the celebrants, it’s neutropenic. The nurses—fairy godmothers for the night—have converted aconference room into a fantasy dance hall, complete with streamers and a disco ball and mood lighting48.
Kate is a vine twined around Taylor. They sway to completely different music than the song that is playing.
Kate wears her obligatory49 blue mask. Taylor has given her a corsage made of silk flowers, because real onescan carry diseases that immunocompromised patients can’t fight off. In the end, I did not wind up sewing adress; I found one online at Bluefly.com: a gold sheath, cut in a V for Kate’s catheter. But over this is a long-sleeved, sheer shirt, one that wraps at the waist and glimmers50 when she turns this way and that so when younotice the strange triple tubing coming out by her breastbone, you wonder if it was only a trick of the light.
We took a thousand photos before leaving the house. When Kate and Taylor had escaped and were waitingfor me in the car, I went to put the camera away and found Brian in the kitchen with his back to me. “Hey,” Isaid. “You going to wave us off? Throw rice?”
It was only when he turned around that I realized he’d come in here to cry. “I didn’t expect to see this,” hesaid. “I didn’t think I’d get to have this memory.”
I fitted myself against him, working our bodies so tight it felt as if we’d been carved from the same smoothstone. “Wait up for us,” I whispered, and then I left.
Now, I hand a cup of punch to a boy whose hair is just starting to fall out in small tufts. It sheds on the blacklapel of his tuxedo51. “Thanks,” he says, and I see he has the most beautiful eyes, dark and still as a panther’s. Iglance away and realize that Kate and Taylor are gone.
What if she’s sick? What if he’s sick? I have promised myself I wouldn’t be overprotective, but there are toomany children here for the staff to really keep track of. I ask another parent to take over my punch station andthen I search out the ladies’ room. I check the supply closet. I walk through empty hallways and darkcorridors and even the chapel52.
Finally I hear Kate’s voice through a cracked doorway53. She and Taylor stand under a spotlight54 moon, holdinghands. The courtyard they’ve found is a favorite for the residents during the daytime; many doctors whowouldn’t otherwise see the light of the sun take their lunches out here.
I am about to ask if they’re all right when Kate speaks. “Are you afraid of dying?”
Taylor shakes his head. “Not really. Sometimes, though, I think about my funeral. If people will say goodthings, you know, about me. If anyone will cry.” He hesitates. “If anyone will even come.”
“I will,” Kate promises.
Taylor dips his head toward Kate’s, and she sways closer, and I realize that this is why I followed them. Iknew this was what I would find, and like Brian, I wanted one more picture of my daughter, one that I mightworry between my fingers like a piece of sea glass. Taylor lifts up the edges of her blue hygienic mask and Iknow I should stop him, I know I have to, but I don’t. This much I want her to have.
When they kiss, it is beautiful: those alabaster55 heads bent56 together, smooth as statues—an optical illusion, amirror image that’s folding into itself.
When Kate goes into the hospital for her stem cell transplant, she’s an emotional wreck57. She is far lessconcerned with the runny fluid being infused into her catheter than she is with the fact that Taylor hasn’tcalled her in three days, and has in fact not returned her calls either. “Did you have a fight?” I ask, and sheshakes her head. “Did he say he was going somewhere? Maybe it was an emergency,” I say. “Maybe this hasnothing to do with you at all.”
“Maybe it does,” Kate argues.
“Then the best revenge is getting healthy enough to give him a piece of your mind,” I point out. “I’ll be rightback.”
In the hallway, I approach Steph, a nurse who has just come on duty and who’s known Kate for years. Thetruth is, I am just as surprised about Taylor’s lack of communication as Kate is. He knew she was coming inhere.
“Taylor Ambrose,” I ask Steph. “Has he been in today?”
She looks at me and blinks.
“Big kid, sweet. Hung up on my daughter,” I joke.
“Oh, Sara…I thought for sure someone would have told you,” Steph says. “He died this morning.”
I don’t tell Kate, not for a month. Not until the day Dr. Chance says Kate is well enough to leave the hospital,until Kate has already convinced herself she was better off without him. I cannot begin to tell you the words Iuse; none of them are big enough to bear the weight behind them. I mention how I went to Taylor’s houseand spoke58 to his mother; how she broke down in my arms and said she’d wanted to call me, but there was apart of her that was so jealous it swallowed all her speech. She told me that Taylor, who’d come home fromthe prom walking on air, had walked into her bedroom in the middle of the night, with a 105 degree fever.
How maybe it was viral and maybe it was fungal but he’d gone into respiratory distress59 and then cardiacarrest and after thirty minutes of trying the doctors had to let him go.
I don’t tell Kate something else Jenna Ambrose said—that afterward60, she went inside and stared at her son,who wasn’t her son anymore. That she sat for five whole hours, sure he was going to wake up. That evennow she hears noise overhead and thinks Taylor is moving around his room, and that the half-second she isgifted before she remembers the truth is the only reason she gets up each morning.
“Kate,” I say, “I’m so sorry.”
Kate’s face crumples61. “But I loved him,” she replies, as if this should be enough.
“I know.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t. Not when I thought it might make you stop fighting back, yourself.”
She closes her eyes and turns onto her side on the pillow, crying so hard that the monitors she’s still hookedto begin to beep and bring in the nursing staff.
I reach for her. “Kate, honey, I did what was best for you.”
She refuses to look in my direction. “Don’t talk to me,” she murmurs. “You’re good at that.”
Kate stops speaking to me for seven days and eleven hours. We come home from the hospital; we go aboutour business of reverse isolation; we pick through the motions because we have done it before. At night I liein bed next to Brian and wonder why he can sleep. I stare at the ceiling and think that I have lost my daughterbefore she’s even gone.
Then one day I walk by her bedroom and find her sitting on the floor with photographs all around. There are,as I expect, the ones of her and Taylor that we took before the prom—Kate dressed to the nines with thattelltale surgical62 mask covering her mouth. Taylor has drawn63 a lipstick64 smile on it, for the sake of the photos,or so he said.
It had made Kate laugh. It seems impossible that this boy, who was so solid a presence when the flash wentoff mere65 weeks ago, simply is not here anymore; a pang66 goes through me, and immediately on its heels asingle word: practice.
But there are other photos, too, from when Kate was younger. One of Kate and Anna on the beach, crouchedover a hermit67 crab68. One of Kate dressed up like Mr. Peanut for Halloween. One of Kate with cream cheese allover her face, holding up two halves of a bagel like eyeglasses.
In another pile are her baby pictures—all taken when she was three, or younger. Gap-toothed and grinning,backlit by a sloe-eyed sun, unaware69 of what was to come. “I don’t remember being her,” Kate says quietly,and these first words make a bridge of glass, one that shifts beneath my feet as I step into the room.
I put my hand beside hers, at the edge of one photo. Bent at a corner, it shows Kate as a toddler being tossedinto the air by Brian, her hair flying behind her, her arms and legs starfish-splayed, certain beyond a doubtthat when she fell to earth again, there would be a safe landing, sure that she deserved nothing less.
“She was beautiful,” Kate adds, and with her pinky she strokes the glossy70 vivid cheek of the girl none of usever got to know.
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initiating
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| v.开始( initiate的现在分词 )；传授；发起；接纳新成员 | |
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flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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scrutinizing
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| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的现在分词 ) | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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scribbles
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| n.潦草的书写( scribble的名词复数 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下v.潦草的书写( scribble的第三人称单数 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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cocoon
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hummingbird
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foam
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eavesdropped
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| 偷听（别人的谈话）( eavesdrop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intentionally
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| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
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groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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dangles
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| 悬吊着( dangle的第三人称单数 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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peripheral
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| adj.周边的，外围的 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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23
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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pelted
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| （连续地）投掷( pelt的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续抨击； 攻击； 剥去…的皮 | |
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vomit
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| v.呕吐，作呕；n.呕吐物，吐出物 | |
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soothes
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| v.安慰( soothe的第三人称单数 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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smacks
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| 掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌 | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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jittery
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| adj. 神经过敏的, 战战兢兢的 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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aplomb
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| n.沉着，镇静 | |
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crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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hovers
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| 鸟( hover的第三人称单数 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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sprouts
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| n.新芽，嫩枝( sprout的名词复数 )v.发芽( sprout的第三人称单数 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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mischievously
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| adv.有害地；淘气地 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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obligatory
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| adj.强制性的，义务的，必须的 | |
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glimmers
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| n.微光，闪光( glimmer的名词复数 )v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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tuxedo
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| n.礼服，无尾礼服 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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spotlight
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| n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目 | |
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alabaster
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| adj.雪白的；n.雪花石膏；条纹大理石 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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spoke
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| 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 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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crumples
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| 压皱，弄皱( crumple的第三人称单数 )； 变皱 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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lipstick
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| n.口红，唇膏 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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