Disclaimer: Beetlejuice and all related characters belong to Warner Bros. I wouldn't take responsibility for BJ if you paid me. No way, baby.
Chapter 12: Impossible
Lydia collapsed in her chair, completely taken aback. "My mother? What… what are you talking about?" Beetlejuice was peering skeptically at her
"You didn't know?" His voice was casually offhand. She shook her head, mouth still hanging open. He reached over the table and tucked a pale finger gently under her chin, and her mouth closed with an audible click. "You didn't know," he repeated, this time as a statement. His fingertip stroked softly over her throat before he pulled back and settled again in his chair. But Lydia was too distracted to even notice, which made him feel a little sulky.
Her voice was very strained. "What are you talking about? My mother died six years ago."
"It's kinda hard to haunt people when you're not dead, Lyds. Sheesh." But she was looking at him with a new glow in her eye, one that he really didn't like all that much.
"You know her?" Intent, disturbing glow.
"No! I mean, she pelted me with pennies, and I told her to take a hike, you know? And um…" He faltered, because Lydia was gripping the sides of the table so hard that the whole thing was shaking.
"You WHAT?" Lydia was livid. He had spoken to her mother?
He bristled. "She threatened me, and I told her to take a hike. That penny thing is really frickin' spooky, Lyds. Thought it was you at first 'cuz it felt…um, felt like you, but in a freaky menacing sort of way. 'Forty three penny' over an' over—frickin' weird."
All of the fierce color in Lydia's cheeks paled to nothing, and her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke. "What did you say?"
A blare of rock music burst in on them, and Beetlejuice reached out to grab her but missed. She was gone. "Dammit!" he shouted to the empty room. Impossible. The girl was impossible. He swore fluently and long. But as his frustration spent itself, he realized that she wouldn't be able to stay away from him now. She would be back. She would be back tonight. He settled in to finish off the bottle. She would be back tonight or else.
Lydia sat straight up in bed, her heard hammering in her chest. The radio was playing "Radar Love" by Golden Earring. She reached over, yanked it out of the wall, and threw it across the room. "Dammit!" She wanted to call him out, right there, and beat the ectoplasm out of him until he told her exactly what had happened. But she had to go to school, had to be normal. Had to not be a girl that spent the night with grubby poltergeists in nightclubs.
Tonight. He would come tonight, when she called. He would come.