I want to laugh. Suddenly, I collapse. I hear a crack and my shoulder hurts badly. ‘Aaaaah!’ The crack came from my shoulder.

Dad’s feet are back on the ground. He runs to me and tries to lift me up. But that really hurts!

‘What happened? Saara, what happened?’

I can’t sit up. I’ve collapsed like a clothes horse. I’ve gone crooked; I don’t know how to unfold myself. My fingers move, but otherwise I’m in a totally bizarre position.

‘Saara, Saara, Saara…’ Dad’s panting.

‘Help, Dad! It hurts!’

Dad manages to turn me round so I’m on my knees and then, slowly, so I’m in a sitting position. I didn’t know you needed a shoulder to sit up. My feet are stuck because my shoulder’s poking out.

‘How come it’s there? Why did you do that? You should never…You should have asked me to prop you up…’ Dad mutters, pressing my shoulder.

‘Aaaaah!’

The cry sounds so strange that Auntie comes outside, too. She looks at Dad first, and only then at me, a flattened clothes horse. Dad is small and helpless on his knees by my side. Once again, he failed to protect us from danger. I feel my shoulder with my right hand, and, yes, it’s poking out in a strange direction. The world swung my shoulder out of its hole, and Dad couldn’t do a thing about it.

‘Hello, Saara,’ the doctor says.

We’ve driven to the hospital, emergency lights flashing. The doctor is a hairy man. Apart from curly hair on his head, he’s got stubble and hair on his neck and hands. But he has kind eyes and even though he’s touching my shoulder, it doesn’t hurt.

‘So you were learning to do handstands,’ the hairy doctor says.

‘Yes, against a tree.’

‘How far did you count?’

‘Thirty-seven.’

Then the doctor switches on the wall-cabinet light and shows me the X-ray.

‘Here’s your shoulder,’ the doctor begins. ‘This ball should be in that hole, where it goes round. But now it’s popped out, see?’

‘I didn’t know there was a ball like that,’ I say, taking a closer look at the picture. Everything has its place, even under the skin. I think of my shoulder, then of my elbows, fingers, knees, thighs, toes and the point where the head joins the skeleton. Was it really the case that any one of them could pop out of its place at any time, if your gait’s a bit off, that you could just collapse like a clothes horse? I never realized a human being was so fragile.

It’s lucky I’m covered by skin! What would hold all the hands, fingers and other things together otherwise? They could just break and fall out. Without skin, everything could disintegrate. A broken arm, stomach, even the heart or liver!