Dizzy had six hours to win a crown, and she couldn't stay awake for the walk to the door. She sat on the funhouse steps in her paint, red hair stuck to her forehead, juggling three pins to keep her hands busy. The pins slowed. Her yellow eyes drooped. Then her chin hit her chest and the pins clattered down the stairs. She jerked up, heart slamming. This was the third time today. Tonight she had to perform in front of the whole Gathering, the hidden crowd that packed the tunnels below the abandoned funhouse. If she nodded off mid-routine, they wouldn't crown her. They'd laugh her out. So she went to the pink powder man. His shop sat behind a warm-walled building with bright pink trim, all cheerful stripes and painted flowers. Inside it stank like burnt sugar and sweat. Jessie stood at a table, scratching his arm hard enough to leave red streaks, scooping powder into little bags. He didn't sleep. Dizzy figured that made him the right person to ask. "I need something to keep me up," she said. "Just for tonight." Jessie's pale eyes flicked over her paint. He kept scratching. "You want my pep, you pay my price." He slid a bag across the table. "One scoop under the tongue. It'll hold your eyes open through anything." He laughed, dry and cracked. "Held mine open three days." Dizzy counted her coins onto the table. Not enough. Jessie's hand covered the bag. "Short," he said. She dug in her pocket and found her mother's brass ring, the only thing left of her. Her thumb pressed the cool metal. The crown was worth it. She set the ring down. Jessie pocketed the ring and let go of the bag. Back at the funhouse, Dizzy tapped a scoop under her tongue before the crowd. The powder burned. Then the world sharpened. Colors screamed. Her hands moved fast and sure. She juggled fire clubs, five of them, higher than she ever had. The crowd roared. She didn't blink once. She didn't sway. For the first time in her life, sleep did not come for her. She finished clean and stood in the noise, chest heaving, grinning. She had beaten it. She had the crowd. Then her heart kicked sideways. Hard. It skipped, thudded, skipped again. Her hands shook. Sweat poured cold down her spine. The screaming colors went too bright, then wrong. She'd wanted to stay awake, and now her body wouldn't stop. It wouldn't slow down. Dizzy pressed a fist to her chest and felt it race. She had solved one problem and bought a worse one. The finals were tomorrow night. And she'd traded her mother's ring for a bag that might just stop her heart before she ever wore the crown.

By morning Dizzy's heart still ran too fast. She sat in Jessie's shop with empty pockets. The powder man scratched his arm and shook his head. She had nothing left to trade. Her mother's ring was gone. Finals were tonight, and one dose sat behind Jessie's hand, waiting for a price she couldn't pay. "Then take it," Jessie said. He nodded toward the window, out past the pink walls. "The old herb woman. She's got beads, silver, junk all over that place. Slip in, grab something, bring it here." He laughed his dry laugh. "She won't even notice, honey. She's half asleep herself." Dizzy walked to the herb woman's place to case it. She meant to rob it. But the compound stopped her at the gate. It was a leaning stack of weathered wood, bright banners hung from every rail, plants spilling from a hundred pots. An old woman knelt in a garden of soft green herbs, humming, pinching leaves into a basket. She had wild gray hair and round glasses. She looked up and smiled like she'd been expecting a friend. "You've got a rabbit's heart, honey," the old woman said. She pressed two fingers to Dizzy's wrist before Dizzy could pull away. "Feel that. Somebody sold you the county's poison." Her face went flat and hard. "That pep powder. They don't care if it kills you. Sit down." Dizzy sat. Annie Wilkens pushed a cup into her hands and made her drink. Bitter tea. The racing in her chest began to ease. Dizzy's throat tightened. She had come to steal from this woman. "I need to stay awake," Dizzy said. "I've got a crown to win tonight. If I sleep in the middle, I lose it." Annie laughed, soft and delighted. "Awake. No, honey. You've got that backwards." She snipped a bundle of gray-green leaves and rolled them tight. "You smoke this, you fall asleep fast. Deep." She tapped her own temple. "But I'll teach you to walk inside the dream. Steer it. Whatever you do sleeping, your body remembers waking." Dizzy didn't understand. Annie made her lie in the garden and breathe the smoke. It smelled of lavender and earth. Dizzy's eyes shut. And then she was standing in the tunnels under the funhouse, the whole Gathering roaring around her, and she chose every word. She spat a verse that rhymed clean. She juggled without a shake. She heard herself and she was good. No burning tongue. No skipping heart. Just her, awake inside sleep, running the routine again and again. She woke in the garden at dusk. Her hands were steady. Her heart beat slow and even. She hadn't stolen a thing. "Now you own it," Annie said. "No county poison. Go take your crown." Dizzy stood. For the first time she didn't need Jessie, or the powder, or anything to trade. She had the routine burned into her body. Finals were hours away, and she was ready.

Dizzy reached the funhouse at full dark. The old building leaned under the moon, its faded panels cracked and peeling. She found the stone gate behind it, sunk in the earth, and climbed down into the noise below. The tunnels shook with drums and shouting. Finals had begun. She smoked the last of Annie's rolled leaves before her name was called. Her eyes grew heavy. She stepped onto the stage half asleep. Then the dream took her. She stood in the tunnels she had rehearsed a hundred times inside her mind. She knew every beat. Her mouth moved on its own and the words came clean. Her hands rose and the pins spun. Outside the dream, her real body did the same. She walked the routine while she slept, steering it from within, just as Annie promised. No racing heart. No shaking. Only the rhythm she owned. The crowd went quiet, then broke. They stood on their chairs. They shouted her name. Someone knocked over a bench. The pins landed in her palms one after another, and she spat the last verse without a stumble. She dreamed the finish and her body bowed. Whoop whoop, the crowd roared, loud enough to shake dust from the tunnel roof. A hand caught her shoulder as she stepped off. She woke to a short man with a painted skull face, black and white, his hair long under a bandana. A chain hung at his throat. He grinned wide. "You just took the whole room down, little sister," he said. "I'm Violent J. I run this Gathering." He held up a battered tin crown. His grin dropped a notch. "Judges want you back tomorrow. One more round. Two of you left standing." Dizzy blinked, still half in the dream. "I thought this was finals." "It was." He turned the crown in his hands. "But you tied. Some cat did his set clean too. So there's a runoff. Tomorrow night, same gate." He pressed the crown against her chest, then pulled it back. "Can't give you this yet, honey. Gotta earn it twice." Her stomach dropped. The leaves were gone. She had smoked the last of them to fall asleep tonight. Without the smoke she couldn't reach the dream, and without the dream her hands would shake and her heart would race the old way. Violent J was already walking off. She grabbed his sleeve. "Who's the other one? Who tied me?" He laughed and nodded toward the far tunnel. A man stood in the shadows there, watching her. Thin. Scratching his arm. She knew that dry laugh before she saw his face. Jessie. "He said you'd fold without him," Violent J said. "Guess we'll see tomorrow." Dizzy stood alone as the crowd emptied out. She had won the night and lost her cushion. One more round, no leaves left, and Jessie waiting on the other side of the gate.

Morning came gray and useless. Dizzy walked the edge of town with empty pockets. The runoff was tonight, and Annie's leaves were gone. Without them she could not sleep her way into the dream. Without the dream her hands would shake on stage. She checked every seam of her coat for a scrap of leaf. Nothing but lint. She had no plan and no herb, and Jessie waiting across the gate. She drifted until she reached a rundown lot. Rows of golf carts sat under a leaning roof, tires flat, seats split. Faded signs hung crooked over broken windows. A short man in black lay across a red cart's hood. His face was painted white and black like a skull, hair spread over the metal. A bottle rocked in his hand. She knew the paint. This was Violent J's partner, the man who built the Gathering underground. "You look like a dead battery, little sister," he said, not opening his eyes. "Sit down before you fall down, ninja." Dizzy sat on the cracked seat. "I lost the thing that puts me to sleep. I can't perform tonight without it." He laughed and swung upright. The bottle sloshed, pale gold behind fancy glass. "Sleep's the wrong medicine, ninja." He pushed the bottle at her. "You want to stop caring. You want happy, dizzy, dumb. Best decisions I ever made came from not thinking, ninja." She stared at the bottle. It was not Annie's way. Annie's way was gone. "What is it?" "Freedom, ninja." He grinned wide. "Nobody up there matters. You spin your pins and you laugh at all of them." Dizzy took the bottle. It was heavier than the leaves had ever been. She thought of steady hands and clean dreams, and knew she had lost that road. This was the only door left. She stood, tucked the bottle inside her coat, and left him laughing on the hood. Night fell. She climbed down the stone gate into the noise. Drums shook the tunnels. She waited in the dark near the stage. Before her name was called, she pulled the stopper and drank. The tequila burned her throat. She did not stop. She drank until the bottle ran dry and the tunnel tilted. Jessie went before her. He worked the crowd with his dry laugh, thin arms twitching. When his set ended, they pushed Dizzy toward the light. The floor rolled under her. Her head swam. She staggered out past Jessie, grinning at nothing, the empty bottle rolling from her hand. Jessie caught her arm as she passed. "You're wasted," he said, and his grin spread. "You'll fall on your face out there." Dizzy pulled free. The crowd blurred into one bright smear. She did not care. She had traded the dream for this. There was no going back now. She stepped onto the stage drunk and dizzy, with her pins in her hands and no plan but to not care at all.

The pins felt wrong in Dizzy's hands. She threw the first one and missed. It clattered across the stage. The second spin came loose too. The crowd's cheer thinned to muttering. Somewhere in the dark tunnel, a drum stopped. She grabbed for the third pin and dropped it. The floor tilted under her boots. She had drunk the whole bottle to feel nothing, and now she felt everything sliding away. The crowd started to boo. A cup flew past her ear. Dizzy squinted at the bright smear of faces and saw one figure standing at the stage edge, arms crossed, grinning that dry grin. Jessie Pinkton. Her rival. The man who once sold her stuff, then pushed her to steal for it. He had gone before her tonight and worked the crowd clean. Now he watched her fall apart and loved every second. "Told you," Jessie called. He scratched his skinny arm, twitching. "You'll fall on your face." Something in Dizzy snapped loose. She staggered off her mark and lurched toward him. Her boots caught. The pins rolled from her fingers. She got right up in his face, swaying, eyes half shut. "Your mamma's so fat," Dizzy slurred. Jessie's grin froze. "What?" She never finished the joke. Her stomach heaved. The tequila came up all at once. She threw up down the front of Jessie's white tank top, then over her own coat, a hot sour flood. Jessie jumped back, arms flung wide, but too slow. Yellow slime dripped off his chest. "Get it off," he shouted, clawing at his shirt. "Get it off me!" Dizzy swayed once. Her knees gave. She dropped straight down into the puddle she had made and did not get up. Her cheek pressed into the warm heap. Her yellow eyes closed. The floor stopped tilting because she was part of it now. The crowd went wild, but not for her. They pointed and howled with laughter. Then the chant started, low at first, then all together, stamping in time with the drums. "You messed up! You messed up! You messed up!" It filled the tunnels under the funhouse. It bounced off the warped painted walls. Jessie stood over her, wiping the mess from his arms, and for a moment even he stopped smiling. He just stared down at the small red-haired girl passed out in her own filth. Hands grabbed Dizzy's ankles and wrists. They dragged her off the stage, her coat leaving a smeared trail across the boards. The chant did not stop. Somewhere above, Violent J watched from the shadows and shook his head. The runoff was over.