Answer:
B. Rises into the oppressive air.
Explanation:
The sentence is written in present tense. She "protests" the heat. So C can be eliminated as it is written in past tense: "settled closely around her." Choice A can be eliminated because it doesn't make sense in the context of the sentence. The overwhelming heat is "radiating from the pavement" and ______. We need to add another action of the heat onto this. "Is suffocating" is not an action. Not only does "rises" use present tense like the rest of the sentence, but it is a second action that the heat is completing. It's "radiating" and "rising."
