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French accent and a flirty little cock of her hips. Genevieve refused to smile. She grabbed back her Vuarnets and put them on. With—­a second later, just when Julianna was about to bite into her taco—­a flirty little cock of her hips that made her sister laugh again like a spaz.
    Two preppy college guys in Izods were scoping Genevieve out, from over by the freshwater taffy. She took off her Vuarnets again and held that thing between her teeth—­the arm of the sunglasses or whatever it was called—­while she pulled her hair back through a scrunchie. Just to watch the two college guys watching her. See? Genevieve had a genius gift, too.
    College guys often had good drugs. Too bad that Genevieve was not, today, on speaking terms with drugs.
    No! Can’t hear you, drugs! Lalalalalala!
    â€œYour mouth is too big for your head,” Genevieve told her sister. “You better hope your head grows, or you’re gonna look like one of those snakes that can unhinge their jaws to eat an antelope or whatever.”
    â€œThen I can join the freak show. Do you remember Dad and Stan?”
    Stan was the world’s smallest man, barely three feet tall but perfectly proportioned, a perfect little doll man. He sat inside a tent, on a tiny chair, in the center of a roped-­off sawdust ring. ­People stood at the rope and stared at him. Genevieve and Julianna’s dad had taken them to see Stan once. Their dad shared his popcorn with Stan and asked him what he thought about Gerald Ford.
    Their aunt used to say, about their dad, that he never met a stranger.
    But no way did Julianna remember any of that. Genevieve had been barely nine when their dad was killed in a car wreck, which meant Julianna would have been barely four.
    â€œYou don’t remember Stan. You were too little.”
    â€œI wasn’t. I remember that Dad and Stan talked about politics.”
    â€œYou just remember me telling you that.”
    â€œI don’t! I remember Dad—­”
    â€œShut up!” Genevieve said. She felt a slash of rage, white hot, blowing up out of nowhere. Here one second and then gone again so quickly that she was just a spectator, too close to a train that rushed past and sucked the breath out of her lungs.
    She glanced at Julianna and felt bad. She wanted to explain: It’s not you. Well, mostly it’s not you. It’s you and it’s not you. It’s you, yes, because you’re twelve years old and you shouldn’t need a baby-­sitter to take you to the fair. Genevieve, when she was her sister’s age, was running wild on the midway with her friends. Buying plastic barrels of root beer and spiking them with cheap rum. But Julianna was their mother’s precious baby, and—­especially after what had happened last month at that movie theater across town—­she wouldn’t let Julianna out of the house without a police escort. My precious baby, Julianna, if anything like that ever happened to her, I would just et cetera, et cetera.
    And if anything like that ever happened to Genevieve? Genevieve noticed that their mother didn’t get all melodramatic about that.
    Their mother didn’t want to let Julianna go to the fair at all. But Julianna begged and begged, and finally their mother caved.
    â€œI trust you,” she warned Genevieve, meaning of course that she didn’t. She hadn’t trusted Genevieve since the DUI last year. Since the time she’d caught Genevieve smoking pot when she was fourteen. Since ever, really.
    â€œYou’re driving me out of my mind,” Genevieve told Julianna. “It’s like getting tortured. It’s like getting tortured by a Nazi who smells like watermelon Jolly Ranchers.”
    Julianna giggled and bumped her head against Genevieve’s shoulder like a puppy. She was so easy. She forgave and forgot, and rainbows filled the sky again. It made Genevieve furious. Julianna should tell