"Happy birthday, Babes!" Beetlejuice shouted in her ear, jerking her out of sleep. The twelve-year-old, now thirteen, looked up, rubbing her eye with her fist.

"How'd you get here, Beej?" She asked tiredly.

"You talk in your sleep, Lyds." He pointed out. She fell back on one of her purple pillows.

"I wish I was still in my sleep." She yawned. He shook his head.

"No you don't! It's your birthday, and we've got a bajillion things to do." He said, bouncing on the end of her bed. "You're thirteen! Com'on!" He turned into a number thirteen, and she giggled a bit, climbing out of bed and putting her hair up quickly.

"So what are we going to do to celebrate?" She asked happily. BJ grinned.

"Well, we'll start with your present." With that, he began to dig through his pockets, piling stuff on her bedside table as he went. Most of it was very Beetlejuice-esque, but a few things surprised her, like a couple of sea-shells banging around next to a few marbles. Sea-shells didn't seem very Beetlejuice like at all.

With a triumphant 'ah-ha!', he produced a gift with a rather questionable wrapping job. He handed it to the big-eyed little girl, but she didn't take it. Instead, she asked a question:

"So, Beej, what's up with the sea-shells?" Beetlejuice looked up, startled. He grabbed them quickly, in a very un-BJ-like manner, and shoved them in his pockets.

"They…they…" She had never heard his lost for words before. It was really…strange. "They belonged to my sister." He finally gulped. "She, err, liked the sea." Lydia blinked, pulling on her poncho.

"I didn't know you had a sister, Beej! We should visit her!" She blurted, missing the sadness in her friend's voice.

"That's be a bit hard, Babes. She's dead – gone, dead. Like, not even coming to the afterlife dead." His face was uncharacteristically gloomy, and Lydia was fairly sure she was gonna need an umbrella in not too long.

"That's possible?" She asked in disbelief. Beetlejuice nodded. "Oh…" She said sadly.

"She was my best friend in the real world, Lyds. And she loved the sea, she used to make me take her there, even when we were really little, just so she could collect shells. She gave these to me." He played with one.

Then he sprung up from the bed. "We're wasting the whole day bein' long faced, Babes. Let's get going!" She grinned.

"That's more like the Beej I know!" She said happily, grabbing her unopened present from the bed and following her best friend, a certain ghost-with-the-most, into the stretches of the Netherworld.



She never again asked about his sister. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.