This managed to make Céline laugh. She bent down to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf. When she straightened up again she felt everything spinning, white dots in front of her eyes. Sweat bathed the back of her neck, already clammy with that mane of hair – she should have put it in a ponytail – and the beginning of summer. And then the crowd, the noise, the engine heat rising from the machine…

“Come on,” Jo insisted, “let’s get out of here. You look like shit.”

“OK, back off. Have you seen yourself?”

“Fuck you, Céline. Go ahead, take the ride, you’ll just throw up all over Enzo, bet he’ll love that.”

“What did you say?” Enzo shouted.

“Nothing,” they replied in unison, not looking at him.

The music started again, grafted to the spider like the call of an animal. In a loop, irreversibly stuck on repeat. It occurred to Jo that she was the only one to grasp the irony of the situation.

They stepped into the cars. Jo sat first and pulled down the safety barrier. She always preferred to take her adrenaline injections alone. The others got in two by two, in giggling pairs, fastened the straps over their bellies and handed their plastic tokens to Sauveur, the manager of the ride: it’s always been him, only now he has a tooth missing and thinner hair. He winked at Jo; he’s always been good at spotting the oddballs, and loves them like a brother.

The spider got going, lifting its legs to the sky. Jo looked down: the kids were pressing their noses to the glass tanks piled up with miniature soft toys, trying to catch a rabbit with pincers, losing it every time. Further away, the bar and its display of glasses looked like a toy tea set and her parents like little animals.

“Freed from Desire” reverberated even louder up there.

This lurch above the world was suddenly intoxicating. Jo had forgotten. She would have preferred a different soundtrack, something grandiose or coarse instead of this old-fashioned crap. Never mind; she enjoyed the spin and her legs feeling like cotton wool. It’s so fucking boring here that any strong emotion will do. At least if they shudder it means they’re not dead, stuck on repeat. Ahead, glued to Enzo, Céline was letting out little cries whenever the Tarantula gave them a jolt. Jo watched her sister, blurred by the speed: a year older, a birdbrain with the bearing of a queen. Sixteen years of thrashing in the world, glimpsing the abyss, blooming without maturing. Even prettier than the year before and a bit more stupid. Funny how it’s Céline who’s the eldest. Johanna isn’t exactly responsible, but even at fifteen she has some of that desperate weariness that sometimes stands in for maturity.

Suddenly, Céline’s head stopped bobbing about and fell onto Enzo’s shoulder. But it didn’t stay there, nestling like a girlfriend’s: she fell backwards, shaken by the speed. Enzo panicked and tried to lift her to face him. He was holding the back of her neck as though it was about to break, shouting and waving his free arm like everyone else around. Jo knew immediately that her sister had passed out, but she didn’t scream. She waited for it to be over, for the spider to complete its crazy dance; just a few minutes to go, no more. Time always feels slower when you’re perched up there but it would soon calm down, she knew it. Impossible to enjoy the dizziness at the moment. She was sure that idiot was going to be sick; it was written all over her face.