KIMBERLY STEELE is the author of the Forever Fifteen Free Vampire Audiobook, available as a free iTunes Podcast or from ForeverFifteen dot com. The Continuation of Sarah Williams is her first fanfiction.


The three words stuck in her throat. She could not bring herself to say them anymore; as if she were trying to swallow a fat, wriggling, wart-studded toad fresh from a hillbilly's backyard crick.

She was so sick of herself. She was so sick of her own antics, she couldn't be her own friend if she doubled herself. Sick of the endless loop of emotions: hope-perseverance-despair, with hope sagging as deep and bowed as the decrepit shingled roof of her father's overstuffed tool shed, where raccoons and brown owls nested amongst the old rakes and gasoline-stinking mower. Always the diminutive brown owls, never the barn owl she wished for.

She tried to imagine the neighbor's ambling Victorian was Jareth's castle. She pretended by squinting her eyes until they were narrow slits that the white turrets poking out of a sheath of overgrown trees could have been behind a hedge maze. Almost, but not quite.

"It's . . . not . . . fair!" She blurted out to her usual non-audience.

There they were, the three words that had never had the slightest relevance within the context of her life, yet there she was, uttering them.

He had asked her what her basis for comparison was.

Was it fair that nine year olds in the Sudan were starving or turned into child soldiers forced to maim and execute their own family members? The imaginary Jareth in her head liked to ask, liked to skewer her on a prong of guilt in penance for being American-born and white in one of the most prosperous eras in human history.

Was it fair that a girl her age in Afghanistan had never been to school and would have daughters and granddaughters who would never go to school, mainly because said girl was married to her own uncle at twelve and the law smiled upon it?

Was it fair that the kid down the street--she forgot his name even though he had been trying to get her attention since January--had to go to community college because his daddy was, to put it bluntly, poorer than hers? No, life wasn't fair for many.

Her life was pretty charmed, all things considered. She ought to be grateful, the imaginary Jareth cadjoled. Her evil stepmother Irene rode her constantly for her negative attitude. It worried Dad, Irene, and everybody else that she seemed unable to make friends at her advanced age. Truth was, she didn't want friends. She had nothing in common with them. Besides, she didn't want the severity of her depression known.

It was bad enough not being able to stand yourself, what if others couldn't stand you either?

Yeah, yeah. Other girls with similar circumstances, i.e. rich girls, didn't mope around wasting their lives on a fantasy. Other girls had lives: boyfriends, after-school activities, real friends. Other girls didn't want to run away with an imaginary Goblin King. It begged the question: Am I insane?

Even though the thirteen hours she had spent in the Goblin King's world had seemed utterly real, maybe none of it had happened. Maybe she was just another garden-variety schizo. There was crazy on her mother's side; Great-Aunt Maggie who killed herself by sticking her head in a gas stove and Grandpa Kerry who heard voices.

Hoggle and all of her beloved friends had returned only twice after she had gotten Toby back, once in a great raucous party in her room and the last time in a field in the vicinity of the particle accelerator grounds.

They had promised to always be her friends . . . they had lied. It didn't make her angry, only sad. The last time she had seen Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus was the last time she had felt genuinely good about herself. Seven years was a long time not to feel good about yourself, as if a curse were cast upon her the day she had broken the great mirror in Jareth's ballroom.

Both times, her friends from the Labyrinth had congratulated her on beating Jareth and choosing the right-hand path. She had basked in the admiration, absolutely convinced that she had done the right thing by refusing Jareth's offers and pleas.

She could have been his Queen and lived in a magical land, ruling over time and enchanted space where anything she dreamed would have been possible. She had given up that land of mysticism and wonder to save her little brother, sparing that annoying kid from becoming the Goblin King's apprentice, sparing him from becoming somebody special.

Toby wasn't so little or special anymore. He didn't remember anything--of course he was only eighteen months old at the time—but there was more to it. Toby was just an average kid. The child she had risked her life for, braved the mazes, the Oubliette, the Cleaners, dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, was painfully average.

If Jareth existed, he might not even notice Toby, a bratty eight year old gaming addict who was getting more than a little fat from his constant diet of foods that ended in the suffix -ito (Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos) and played video games until his thumbs were sore.

Would Toby go be a Goblin Prince if Jareth newly summoned him? Jareth wasn't there to answer any questions. The white owl had stopped coming around to stare into her bedroom window not long after her so-called friends had abandoned her.



The annoying neighbor--Seth, right, that's what his name was--was in her Art Appreciation class at Bryce Community.

She thought she recognized him as she walked in, her long skirt flowing behind her, her beautiful dark brown hair unbound. It was the first day of Autumn and she was personally celebrating by wearing her authentically hand-sewn dark red medieval cotehardie. She didn't care how weird she looked or how many fellow students eyes popped out of their sockets. A couple of jerks had snickered and muttered "Where's the Ren fair?", under their breath as she walked across the campus that morning; but for the most part her fellow community collegians minded their own business, smoking their smokes and sucking down their bitter vending machine coffees or syrupy Mountain Dews. 



She took her Interpretations of Art text out of her leather bookbag and thunked it down upon the table. Seth came over and sat next to her.



"Good morning, Sarah. Is this seat taken?"



"Not that I know of." She said flatly in Seth's general direction.

He made himself comfortable. His ultra-short brown hair stood in eager tufts around his dense hairline, a five-o'clock shadow darkening his eight A.M. chin. He had baggy brown pants on that were vaguely military, a faded black shirt with some band she didn't know on it, and combat boots. Seth wore the uniform of every suburban ex-alternative kid in high school, indicating that for him, Bryce Community College was the equivalent of being a super-senior. The rank, dusty smell of old lunches emanated from his backpack as he extracted his own Interpretations text and happily placed it next to hers. 



"I've heard this instructor is a pushover." Seth sneered with false bravado. She already wished she had been a bitch and told him to bug off.



"Is he?" She didn't want to play ball.



"Yeah, as long as you show up, you make the grade. You don't even have to do better than a C on the final exam."



"Cool." She thumbed through her text, pretending to be interested in the illustrations.



"So, how are your folks?" 

She gave him an underlook.

"Why do you care?" She mentally willed Seth to disappear. It didn't work. 



"Sorry I asked." Seth thumbed through his own text. If he had been a puppy, his tail would have been between his legs.



"They're going through one mess of a divorce, if you have to know. My mom has been cheating on my dad for the last three years with some himbo from the human resources department of her company. My dad has lung cancer. Really something you wanted to know, right?"



"Oh man, sorry. That sucks."



"Whatever." She shrugged and buried her nose in her art book as the instructor breezed into the room, the silence descending around him.



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