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When Sarah was eighteen, eleven weeks and counting to graduation, her stepmother called her into the living room, and her father handed her a wrapped box the size of a small country while Toby jumped up and down and yelled, "Open it, Sarah! Open!"
"But," Sarah said, because it wasn't her birthday, and she hadn't graduated yet, so—?
"We wanted to get you something really special," Patricia said, beaming. "Go ahead, open it."
Kneeling on the floor while Toby made a gleeful pile of silver and blue confetti, Sarah lifted off the lid and lifted the dress partway out, staring at the opalescent spangled shine on the absurdly puffed sleeves, the rustle of taffeta and lace skirts: like something between a memory and a dream.
"Laurel's mother told me your prom theme these year is fairy tales, so I took those sketches you make all the time to a dressmaker," her stepmother said, and it was true: the dress came out in a thousand scribbles in the margins of her notebooks, on the scratch pad by the phone, on shopping lists and address books. The dress, she could draw. Everything else—"Go ahead, honey, try it on."
Sarah took the box up to her bedroom and slowly put the dress on. It fit only a little less well than the other one. She looked at herself in the mirror and took her hair out of the ponytail and shook it loose over her shoulders, and one by one she took the silver hair clips from her old ballerina jewelry box and pinned it back. The clips were cheap from the mall accessories store, all wrong, but they'd been the closest she'd found; also the big costume-jewelry choker; she'd tried them on at home only once and thrown them into the box. But the dress—the dress was close enough to carry everything else with it, and when she came down the stairs and stood in the archway of the living room, her father and Patricia turned and looked at her, and their smiles gradually went stiff and puzzled.
"You look beautiful, sweetheart," her dad said finally, half a question, and one she couldn't answer yet.
She was going to the prom with Rory Jacobsen, because he had asked her; he was her lab partner in chemistry, and they'd done homework together a few times. They were sharing a limo with three other couples, to cut down on the cost, and it pulled up at her house last because they lived closest to the highway. It was raining a little, and Sarah was waiting on the porch under the lights. The driver came out under an umbrella to get the door, and stared at her as she stepped down.
But then she ducked inside and the illusion broke: a scream of laughter came out to meet her, there was green and pink neon running along the bar and a tiny disco ball hanging from the roof. She squeezed in between Rory and Laurel and let Amanda give her a rum and coke. "You look awesome!" Rory yelled in her ear, putting his arm around her shoulders, and she gave him a small smile for answer while she put the cheap corsage on around her wrist. Wishing Well was on the radio.
The hotel ballroom was decorated with Christmas lights and streamers and silver balloons, and by the door there was a basket full of masquerade dominos that had probably come from Toys R Us; most people weren't bothering. The room was only half full so far, of seniors already two drinks in, and when Rory got her a glass of the punch at least three people had spiked that, too. The teacher-chaperones were in a corner talking, bored, paying no attention.
"You want to dance?" Rory said, uncertainly: she was out of the limo and uncrumpled, standing under a chain of blinking white fairy lights, and she could see her reflection glittering in his eyes. Boys and girls were looking at her across the room, people she'd never even talked to all four years of high school.
"Yes," she said, instead of let's wait until there are some other people dancing because those words didn't belong in the mouth of the woman who wore this dress, and let Rory take her out onto the floor.
But the music was wrong, and Rory was wrong, in his rented tux and patent leather shoes that squeaked while he tried helplessly to dance something like a waltz with her. He probably had never even seen a waltz in his life, she thought uncharitably, and didn't feel sorry for the thought; she was too busy with the creeping fear what if this is all there is, and after only a few dances it drove her out of his hands and out onto the hotel veranda.
The rain was falling harder: everything outside was black as pitch, except for the handful of lights on the hotel walkways shining on wet leaves. She stood breathing hard against the pulled-tight bodice strings around her waist, trapped in a bubble she couldn't break.
"Sarah," Jareth whispered, always and ever lying in wait, but this time she turned to the sound, slowly held her hand out to him and let him use the touch to draw himself into the world: black leather glove taking substance under her fingers, the knife-sharp points of his long glittering jeweled coat drawing themselves out of the night. His mask was black leather, and his eyes gleamed out at her from behind it: one green, one black.
"Would you dance with me, Sarah?" he said, with his cat's smile of sharp white teeth, and she knew there would be a price; there was always a price; but she was starting to think she might be willing to pay.
"You'll have to leave, after," she said, testing. "Without taking anyone with you." His mouth went thin and dissatisfied, but he bent his head, and then he took her hand and led her out.
The music didn't seem to matter when it was Jareth leading, and neither did the other people around them, reduced to just a blur of stupid, staring faces. He was all sharp edges, as though he had collected the light from everyone else, and she had forgotten—or maybe she hadn't noticed, before—the odd prickling heat of his hands on her, even through leather and silk. It was hard to breathe against the laces of her dress.
"Sarah," he murmured, whirling her until the tacky decorations left dizzy, glowing trails, and when they stopped moving, it was because the clock was striking midnight. The music had ended an hour ago: everyone else was gone. They stood alone together under the big industrial chandelier, and he raised both her hands to his lips.
"I'm not afraid of you. I won't be afraid of you," Sarah said, and hoped it was still true.
"You were younger then," he said. "It's not your fear I want anymore."
If he wasn't trying to frighten her, she didn't know why she was shaking. "So what do you want from me?"
He smiled, his wicked mouth the thinness of a blade, and he leaned in—leaned in to—and then he turned his head to one side and his lips just brushed her ear. "What would you give me, Sarah?" he whispered, and with a rustle of feathers he was gone. Without taking anyone—anyone at all.