Chapter Twelve
The queue for the checkouts in the Shocking Mall's Revolting Records was no longer even in the store, nor the mall for that matter.
For the first time, an album made by a living person was not only on sale but had become a bestseller overnight, and crowds had streamed in hoping to pick up a copy.
Even topside, in Peaceful Pines, Lydia's interview with Lily Mode had not only gone smoothly but had gone straight to print, and now every copy in her hometown had sold out.
Despite all this success, Lydia wasn't resting on her laurels. She had no free time at all anymore.
Her tour was underway and had gone off without a hitch so far. Her debut album, entitled Black Alice in Neither-Neitherland was a hit, despite her lack of superstar presence. Lydia wondered how Violet had gotten away with naming a tribute album something that had no reference to the tracks on the CD, but had let it go. This was the Neitherworld; questions were usually left unanswered.
She'd made up a list of songs from her world that she felt comfortable singing, and Violet, of course not knowing any current songs from the land of the living, had just agreed after hearing short bursts of each track.
With Monitor and Violet's efforts, Lydia was fast becoming a household name in the Neitherworld.
Whilst people were flocking to stores to get her album, others were gathered around her here, now. She'd been onstage for the past half-hour, dressed like a Victorian slasher doll with a decapitated teddy bear under one arm.
She'd just finished singing a few covers of Evanescence tracks and had called for a break, but now as she retreated from the stage she looked through the crowd to try and catch a glimpse of Beetlejuice. He hadn't been backstage at the last interval, and she doubted he would be there this time.
The audience was too thick; it was hard to pick out his face amongst the sea of people beneath her. Giving up, she stepped behind the stage-curtain, vanishing to cries of 'more!'.
"Get your merchandi-ise!" Beetlejuice hollered, stood on a small platform that he'd 'juiced up right behind a stall full of goods. "Step right up folks and get your merchandise for the starlet of the century! The maiden of the millennia! Lydiaaa Deetz!"
Ever since security had tried to forcibly eject him earlier, unable to believe this slob could be Lydia's manager, Beetlejuice had made himself look like a prim, executive version of himself. His hair was a little shorter and slicked back, his pinstripes narrower and his teeth straight and gleaming. It was easy making himself look different, but acting and sounding different was nigh impossible for him.
"You, sir!" He pointed at some teenager in the crowd. "You look like you need a Lydia t-shirt,"
Suddenly his stall was set upon. His eyes turned into giant dollar signs as kids, teenagers and adults, predominately males, threw wads and wads of cash at him as they grabbed handfuls of merchandise.
"Yeeeee!" Beetlejuice squealed happily, pocketing as many notes as he could in one fell swoop.
Pretty soon, however, the cart was only bare bones, and he was still surrounded by males of varying ages, mostly between fifteen and their mid-twenties.
One fanboy slammed his hands down on the counter. "Do you have any pictures?" He demanded eagerly.
Beetlejuice, who'd been too busy snatching cash out of the air, blinked. "Bwuhh?"
He stuffed some more notes into his pockets distractedly, and then stepped over the kid. "Pictures?" He repeated, incredulous.
Another guy appeared next to the first, leaning as far over the counter as he could. "Yeah, pictures of Lydia!" He agreed.
Not one to let easy money pass him by, Beetlejuice nodded vaguely. "Uh, sure, sure…" Then, just like that, he 'juiced up some photos, making them appear between his fingers. Standing like a magician displaying a hand in a card trick, he held them out. "That'll be twenty dollars each,"
The first kid looked appalled. "For a photo?"
Unsympathetic, Beetlejuice waved the photographs. "Hey, do you want one or don't ya?"
A guy at the back tried to push his way forwards. "I'll take it if he won't pay!"
The kid's eyes bulged and he grabbed for a photo, pushing a Neitherworldian twenty dollar bill across the counter. "No, no, I'll take it!" He cried, before retreating.
It wasn't long before all the photos in Beetlejuice's hand sold out.
Beetlejuice found himself 'juicing up photograph after photograph then, but his magic could only do so much. It was one thing to teleport something, or build something out of what was already in front of you, but quite another to bring something into existence. After doing it for so long he found his energy completely zapped. Instead of creating photographs from nothing, he had to zap ones he had at home to sell instead, and that hurt.
He no longer liked the hungry looks on the boys' faces. Just why did they want pictures of his Lyds anyway?
When Beetlejuice gave up 'juicing photos from home, two unsatisfied teens still remained, making 'give me' motions with their hands. One of them was the second kid who'd spoken up in the first place. "More photos?" He asked.
"Uh…" Beetlejuice began searching in his pockets, flustered. Finally he found the corner of something that felt like a photograph and pulled it out without thinking. When he caught sight of it, he saw that it was the one he'd pieced together of his and Lydia's prom photos. He was too numb with surprise to pocket it immediately.
"I'll take it!" The boy in front of him snatched it from him.
Beetlejuice, stunned, blinked, before he made to grab it back. "No! Wait– that's mine!" He objected.
With his spare hand the kid threw some money at him. "H-Here, take this–"
Beetlejuice ignored the dollars that rained down around him and tugged so hard on the photo that the teen almost came with it. He tried to laugh it off. "No, no, no, you don't want a picture like this,"
"I'll crop the jerk out of it, but she looks hot here!"
Jerk?
Hot?
Something inside of Beetlejuice snapped.
His face turned a dark shade of red that almost deepened to purple in his rage.
"Hey! BACK OFF, KID!" He roared, throwing in his infamous Double Deluxe Lung-Tosser face for good measure.
The teenager screamed, horrified, before letting go of his side of the photo and hitting the ground running. The other remaining guy ran with him.
In the aftermath, customer-less and panting angrily, Beetlejuice looked down at the successfully defended photograph… only to find that a fault line had ripped its way down the middle during the tug-of-war, almost separating him and Lydia.
He groaned sadly, running his fingertips over the surface before putting it away in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Then he snapped his fingers, 'juicing himself back to normal and making the stall and platform disappear.
Idiot punk kid… He thought to himself, scratching the nape of his neck as he fought his way through the crowd towards the heavily guarded entrance of the back-stage area.
He was offended by the teen calling him a jerk, but there was something else too, the same thing that had driven him over the edge.
Hmph. How could he have the nerve to say that about Lydia?
Beetlejuice wasn't sure what bothered him so much about someone calling Lydia 'hot'; he wasn't sure whether he hated that it made her out to be some piece-of-meat idol, or whether it reminded him that other guys saw her as attainable. After all, she was a stunner.
He stopped, and then shook his head with a soundless laugh.
Yes, yes she was, and he'd always known it, he'd just never wanted to admit it to himself, let alone out loud. She was all grown-up now, these past two weeks with her had taught him as much. She was a mature young woman. Everything had changed, and yet… and yet nothing had changed. She still laughed at all of his jokes, still hung on his every word and still expressed a desire to be with him. He still felt the same low whenever she was gone, still felt the same compulsion to be at her side at every waking moment, and now that she was back from college it seemed she felt that same way too. And the way she looked at him these days... he hadn't yet worked out quite what those looks meant.
He thought about what the kid had said about the photo; how he hadn't commented on her appearance until that one picture – the one that she'd been with Beetlejuice in.
What did that mean? Was it that she was better looking when placed next to someone ugly? Not that I'm ugly, Beetlejuice told himself. But who was he kidding? He was hardly attractive.
Was it because she was happier in that photo than the others? Was it because he was with her that she was happier, that she looked 'hotter'? … and if that was the case then, again, what did that mean?
A security guard stepped in front of Beetlejuice's path, expression grave. "This is a restricted area. Move along,"
Beetlejuice dug in his pockets for a backstage pass but came up with nothing; it appeared that Monitor had conveniently forgotten to give him one. "Er, I'm Lydia's manager," He explained.
The thug of a guard sniffed. Beetlejuice wondered if he and Armhold Musclehugger were related or just gym-buddies; they had the exact same build. The guard didn't budge, voice patronising when he spoke. "Right, 'course you are. I said move along,"
Beetlejuice didn't have time for this guy's crap. Why was he bothering anyway? "You know whut? I will," He said, before snapping his fingers, disappearing in front of the guard's eyes.
He zapped himself backstage.
Lydia, sat down at a dressing table and staring morosely into a wall-mounted mirror, gasped as Beetlejuice's reflection appeared beside hers. She whipped around. "Beej!"
"Missed me?"
She put down the brush she'd been running through her hair, palms facing the ceiling as she gestured to him in disbelief. "Where've you been?"
"Making us some money, babes, like you've been doin'," He pulled up a chair beside her, glancing around the small dressing room. At the moment it was crammed full of haphazardly strewn costumes, and the table Lydia had been sat at was covered in make-up and hair products.
He wrinkled up his nose indifferently.
Lydia sighed. "Beetlejuice, I don't care about the money," She said patiently.
"I know, I know, but when it's there for the taking…"
"… how can you say no?" She finished for him.
"Exactly!"
Lydia rolled her eyes. "Like this, 'n–'"
He pressed a finger to her lips to cut her off. Internally he revelled at how warm and soft they were.
Lydia stared back at him, stunned.
After a moment, Beetlejuice shut his eyes, let out a breath, and then composed himself. He looked at her. "Lyds, when we're done here y'wanna go for a walk?"
A walk? Since when do we go for walks? Lydia thought, curious.
She raised a brow suspiciously as he pulled his finger from her mouth, letting her speak. "We… won't be done till late, Beej. You know that, right?"
"Aww, come on, don't be a stick in the mud, babes. You're not afraid of the dark, and you've got me; what's gonna happen?"
"You'll protect me from the 'creatures that prowl in the night?'" She teased, voice deepening dramatically.
Beetlejuice flashed a debonair smile. "That's what I'm here for,"
"Sounds nice, B. J.," Lydia said eventually, then watched as his eye twitched at the poor choice of word.
"Really? That's what I've been reduced to? Being 'nice'?"
Lydia corrected herself. "Okay, I mean, it sounds frightening. But thrilling. And I'm oh so up for it."
"That's better,"
An attendant stuck her head around the door. "Five minutes to curtain, Miss Deetz,"
Lydia stood up with a sigh. "Well, I guess I gotta go. How'd I look?"
She was wearing a body-con dress that looked like it had been made out of a candy-cane, all diagonal red and white stripes. The only difference was this candy-cane had been splattered with blood.
Beetlejuice reclined in his seat. "Like you're about to rip Little Miss Warden's head off. I love it,"
"Ha." Lydia began to giggle. Recovering, she smiled brightly. "See you on the other side, Beej," She waved, stepping out of the room.
"Knock 'em deader, Lyds!" He called after her.
The Neitherwoods at night was hauntingly beautiful in a way that only Lydia and like-minded girls could really appreciate. The moonlight filtered through the canopy and spotlighted the forest floor, picking out the detail in whatever it cast on. It was like the setting of a noir film, everything black and white, the sky indiscernible amidst the branches of the gnarled, dead trees.
They'd left the path a good hundred yards back, and Lydia had no idea where they were. She didn't care. This walk had been almost meditative, and with every minute that passed she was slipping deeper and deeper into a serene, enlightened state.
A breeze whipped through the woods, howling through branches and twigs to reach them. She wrapped her arms around herself as it hit.
"Y'cold?"
Lydia jumped at the sound of Beetlejuice's voice. It was the first thing he'd said for the past ten minutes or so, despite him floating along beside her.
"A little," She admitted. She'd left the tour venue wearing only her red, cobwebbed dress and nothing was covering her arms. Summer didn't seem to touch the Neitherwoods in the evenings.
The next moment she heard rustling, fabric against fabric, and when she turned she saw that Beetlejuice had removed his jacket.
"Ah–"
He draped it over her shoulders, his feet planted firmly on the ground now.
He rubbed the back of his head absently. "Uh, if anything moves in there, Lyds, it's just a snack for later," He explained almost sheepishly.
Lydia flushed. He'd never offered her his jacket before. She'd never seen him be quite so… so gentlemanly.
"Aren't you gonna be–?" She began, but he waved a hand.
"I'm dead, babes. I don't feel the cold,"
"Oh…"
They started walking again.
Lydia clutched onto his jacket. Funny; even though she knew his skin was usually cold to the touch, sometimes freezing even, his jacket felt almost warm, as though from body heat.
She looked at him. "You don't feel the cold at all?"
He shrugged.
"What about warm? You can feel warm, right?"
Beetlejuice's nose wrinkled. "Well…"
Without another word, Lydia stepped over to him and wrapped an arm around his waist, leaning into him.
Beetlejuice stopped walking. He glanced down at her, not that he had to tip his head very far now that she was older – she was gaining on him fast. He smiled shakily. "I can feel you're warm, babes,"
"Good," She hummed. She slot in nicely by his side.
Beetlejuice bit his lip, opened his mouth to say what he had been about to, closed it, then opened it again. Finally he said: "Do you know how many times I've had to go the doctor since I've been with you?"
The question seemed to come out of nowhere. Lydia, intrigued, glanced up, brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"To check I'm still dead, is what I mean,"
Lydia thought about this. As far as she knew, he'd only been once for his so-called bi-centennial check-up. "Once?" She asked.
"Nope."
She laughed. "Are you trying to say I make you feel alive again?"
Beetlejuice caught her eye. "Well, yeah," He replied, seriously and matter-of-factly.
Lydia stopped in her tracks. Oh.
She began to blush.
Again, they kept on walking. Minutes of silence passed before Beetlejuice decided to clear the air. "So, uh, Lyds–"
"Yes, Beej?" She prompted.
He stalled for a moment, then began to phrase what he'd been meaning to all evening. "You… wanna go slimeballing? You, me, rifles loaded with slime, stalking these woods for the poor saps pit against us?"
Lydia's face, despite the lateness of the night, was radiant. Her eyes practically gleamed. Is he… asking me out? On a date?
"I'd love to," She said without hesitation and leant into him again. This time he wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
"Well– on one condition…"
Beetlejuice froze beside her, but looked down only to find her smiling encouragingly up at him.
"… we go to the Freaky Eyescream Shop afterwards?"
A look of relief crossed the poltergeist's face. He grinned eagerly. "It's a date!" He cried suddenly. Then his eyes widened. "Er– deal. I- I mean, it's a deal…"
Lydia pressed her face into his side and grinned. Despite her close proximity to both his mouth and armpit, areas most considered dangerously toxic, she couldn't, well, smell anything. Maybe because after all of these years she'd grown immune, or psychologically she'd stopped being able to process it.
No, the only thing she could smell was an overtone of something like… like aftershave. And it smelt good.
She blinked. "Beej, are you wearing cologne?"
He tensed. "Me? No, no, not apart from my Eau de Wet Dog," The way his voice cracked at the beginning of the sentence, however, told her otherwise. It was though he'd jumped immediately on the defensive.
Eyebrows raised, Lydia pointed up at him. "You are wearing some!" She accused.
He withdrew his arm from her, gesturing wildly. "Gah! What would I do that for?"
Lydia shrugged. She wasn't sure herself. "Well you won't bathe, so it's the only way you're going to be even half-presentable," She supposed.
Beetlejuice blew a raspberry. "Nnnnahhh. This is me you're accusing, Lyds. Ya must have hit your head," He began to walk on ahead, his pace quickened, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets.
Lydia watched his retreating back, eyes narrowed in suspicion. No… you're denying it so childishly that I'm right. I know I am. You'd have just laughed it off if you weren't.
She dashed after him and put a firm hand on his arm, physically stopping him. "Hey," She said. "You… You don't have to change, B. J.,"
Beetlejuice turned to face her slowly, an eyebrow sceptically cocked. "Lyds, have you seen me in anything but this suit?"
Lydia stared back at him. That was a stupid question, even though it was meant to be rhetorical. Yes, I have, actually.
He was missing the point, however, and she charged on ahead before the subject dropped.
"No, I mean, you don't have to change who you are. For anyone. I'd never want that. You're fine just the way you are,"
His eyes seemed to grow big then. As he processed what it was she was saying, he finally let down his guards and smiled, with his lips only but also with his eyes, and it struck Lydia how he seemed to change in that moment from something so unhandsome to something so beautiful.
Lydia wished he'd have let his smile be the only response because when he opened his mouth he spoiled the moment. "Geez, Lyds, that's sappy even for you,"
She hit him playfully on the arm. "You're such an ass, Beej," She laughed.
He linked his arm with hers, smirking at her. "You liiike it," He crooned back.
Lydia was still laughing. "That's because you're not one all the time. 'Y'cold, Lyds? Want my jacket?' Aw, what a nice guy,"
He looked positively revolted at this. "GAH! Not the 'n' word!" He cried, tugging at his hair. As if trying to destroy any opportunity for that word to remain associated with him, he went to snatch his jacket back. "Hey, gimme that!"
"Mmnnope!" Lydia dashed off, clinging onto the collar of the jacket and cackling madly. "Gonna have to catch me, Beets!"
"Lydiaaa!" He called after her. "C'mon! Give!"
She dove into the thick of the woods, slipping her arms into the suit jacket's sleeves so she didn't have to worry about holding onto it.
"But it looks good on me!" She chanted back teasingly before taking off at a sprint.
"Hey, Lyds! Get back here!" Beetlejuice could only whine after her as he gave chase. "See? See? You're getting warm by running, babes! I lied; I can feel the cold! Babes! Where'd ya go? Heyyyy! Gimme back my jacket!"
Despite his petulant bellowing, he was grinning from ear to ear as he tailed her through the woods.
