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初中英语听力:《暮光之城》系列有声读物在线听(一)

来源:上海中考网        2013-09-09 17:54:24

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  • 初中英语听力:《暮光之城》系列有声读物在线听(一),附听力内容:

    注:每部分听力巡回播放三遍

    以下为听力内容:

      PREFACE

      I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason

      enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have

      imagined it like this.

      I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of

      the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.

      Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I

      loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.

      I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now.

      But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision.

      When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's

      not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

      The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.

      ===========================================================================

      1. FIRST SIGHT

      

      My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was

      seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was

      wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing

      it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

      In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town

      named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on

      this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States

      of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that

      my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in

      this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I

      was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past

      three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two

      weeks instead.

      It was to Forks that I now exiled myself— an action that I took with

      great horror. I detested Forks.

      I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the

      vigorous, sprawling city.

      "Bella," my mom said to me — the last of a thousand times — before I got

      on the plane. "You don't have to do this."

      My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a

      spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave

      my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she

      had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food

      in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got

      lost, but still…

      "I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying

      this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.

      "Tell Charlie I said hi."

      "I will."

      "I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want —

      I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

      But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

      "Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."

      She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she

      was gone.

      It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small

      plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks.

      Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was

      a little worried about.

      Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed

      genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time

      with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high

      school and was going to help me get a car.

      But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone

      would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I

      knew he was more than a little confused by my decision — like my mother

      before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.

      When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen

      — just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.

      Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too.

      Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary

      motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was

      that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights

      on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

      

      Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the

      plane.

      "It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically

      caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?"

      "Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call

      him Charlie to his face.

      I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for

      Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter

      wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of

      the cruiser.

      "I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were

      strapped in.

      "What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for

      you" as opposed to just "good car."

      "Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

      "Where did you find it?"

      "Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian

      reservation on the coast.

      "No."

      "He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.

      That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking

      painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

      "He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so

      he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

      "What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this

      was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.

      "Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine — it's only a few years

      old, really."

      I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up

      that easily. "When did he buy it?"

      "He bought it in 1984, I think."

      "Did he buy it new?"

      "Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties — or late fifties at

      the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.

      "Ch — Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to

      fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic…"

      "Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that

      anymore."

      The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at

      the very least.

      "How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise

      on.

      "Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift."

      Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.

      Wow. Free.

      "You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car."

      

      "I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the

      road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his

      emotions out loud. I inherited that from him. So I was looking straight

      ahead as I responded.

      "That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add

      that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to

      suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth — or

      engine.

      "Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.

      We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that

      was pretty much it for Conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.

      It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green:

      the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a

      canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down

      greenly through the leaves.

      It was too green — an alien planet.

      Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small,

      two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of

      their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the

      early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never

      changed, was my new — well, new to me — truck. It was a faded red color,

      with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I

      loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it.

      Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged —

      the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched,

      surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

      "Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just

      that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either

      walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the

      Chief's cruiser.

      "I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.

      It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west

      bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had

      been belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue

      walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window —

      these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever

      made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The

      desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem

      stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation

      from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair

      from my baby days was still in the corner.

      There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would

      have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that

      fact.

      One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover. He left me

      alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether

      impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile

      and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the

      sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape. I wasn't in the mood to go

      on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime, when I would have to

      think about the coming morning.

      Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and

      fifty-seven — now fifty-eight — students; there were more than seven

      hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here

      had grown up together — their grandparents had been toddlers together.

      I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.

      Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to

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