Néo's magnetic older cousin introduces him to illegal slingshotting and fuels his hunger to become famous.
Evita Jung is Manéo Jung-Espinoza's cousin, two years older and effortlessly at home in the culture of Ceres Station. She brings the truant fourteen-year-old Néo to a portside gathering where Silvestari Campos explains illegal slingshot racing. Although she originally brings him partly so the group can laugh at another girl's infatuation with him, the encounter gives Néo the ambition that shapes the next three years of his life.
As the Y Que nears The Ring, Evita sends a delayed tightbeam over the slingshotters' encrypted black network. She tells Néo that the eyes of the world—and hers—are on him. The brief message gives him the validation he has chased, only hours before his stunt kills him.
Evita is a long, thin young Belter two years older than Néo, with a soft mouth and shining lips. By his final flight she has matured from a teenage girl into a young woman.
Evita is the catalyst for Néo's slingshot obsession and the person whose attention most embodies the social immortality he hopes to win.