Yay, another update, and so soon! I keep worrying I am running out of interesting things to write, and suddenly another piece falls into place.

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Lydia sighed to herself as she was carted around the elegant party that one of the richer neighbors had put on. Delia made a point of showing off her stepdaughter to anyone she might vaguely recognize. Lydia smiled and nodded and pretended to actually be interested in the names she immediately forgot. Parties were not her thing in the first place, let alone smarmy fancy-pants parties designed specifically to show off how well to do you happened to be.

There were not all that many people her age. She figured they must not rate high enough on the pompous list to warrant an invitation. Not that she minded all that much; she rarely got along with people her age anyway. Just a month or two, she assured herself, then you can go off to college and never have to deal with stupid high school boys ever again. She looked forward to college as both an escape from her house and also an excuse to meet a bigger variety of people than her little town had to offer.

She had noticed one guy her age slinking around the outskirts of the party, but he seemed more inclined to stare at her backside than anything else. It just managed to infuriate her; stupid dress and its stupid big butt illusions. It wasn't that big, was it? Betelgeuse had said so, though, and he wasn't even capable of lying about it. Well, he can think its big all he wants, stupid poltergeist. She huffed past the startled young man and didn't bother to dodge bumping into his shoulder rudely; served him right for staring at her like that, anyway. Soon enough she was promptly swept away by Delia to meet a few more depressingly boring people.

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Betelgeuse lounged around the cemetery. God was this boring. He couldn't even go pick up women, they all asked such stupid questions and then got pissed at the answers. "But... Do you love me?" should never be followed with "God no, woman, I have met chihuahuas that grate on my nerves less than your shrill voice." He cringed briefly at the memory and rubbed his cheek where the slap had landed. She had been pretty attractive, too, if you ignored the bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.

He had since begun to refuse to answer people when they asked things. It was starting to weird some of the other ghouls out, though; especially the ones that knew him well. Since con's were out of the picture, he was having a hard time finding things to do. Mostly he contented himself to spying on the Deetzes, but that got boring pretty quickly, especially with the girl out of the house at college. If only he could convince her to talk to him again. He began to chew his lip, trying to think of a way to get her attention that didn't involve her getting so damned pissed.

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Halloween was coming in a few short days and Lydia still did not have a stinking costume to hand candy out in. She knew full well that she didn't need a costume for that, but when the little kids went trick-or-treating through the dorms the previous year she had felt like a disappointment wearing only her regular old black clothes.

She even made a special trip home in order to dig through her parent's attic. It had been so convenient when she lived at home, everything was at her fingertips. Not that she minded the drive all that much, but she certainly didn't enjoy the fanfare that came along with each visit. When she had been living with her father and stepmother it was perfectly acceptable for her to wander off on her own and not be bothered by anybody. Now every meal had to be a special occasion. Delia had even decked the place out in goofy Halloween decorations in preparation for Lydia's visit.

Charles and Delia had finally gone to bed after a painful night of board games. Lydia immediately went up to the attic to search for a costume. The Maitlands were in the basement, Adam had been pretty engrossed in one of his projects and Barbara was down there to help. Sometimes Lydia wondered what exactly they did together because they were alone so much. She promptly decided not to think about it, viewing the couple as a second set of parents and really not wanting to imagine any ghostly hanky-panky between the two of them.

She finally unearthed one of the bigger Halloween boxes and grinned in triumph. She didn't notice at first the dull glow coming from the cemetery in Adam's miniature town. She dug and dug through the box, finding mostly plastic trinkets and pins with little red lights that blinked. She could have sworn that she had a witch costume or something that would still fit. Finally the glow became so bright she could not help but notice it.

Lydia stood over the model and frowned. She couldn't actually find a source for the light, just an odd glow from the general vicinity of the cemetery.

"Beej? Is that you?"

No response. Well… that was odd. She raised her voice a little.
"Betelgeuse! What are you doing?"

"Hey." Came the high pitched response. He sounded… sulky.

She hadn't spoken to him since the dress ordeal. She didn't figure it would do any good to encourage him. She knelt down to squint at him.

"Well, what are you doing, making things glow like this?"

The little figure only shrugged and leaned against the tree, staring at her and looking fairly grumpy about it.

"Oh, you aren't answering me now, huh? Are you still mad or something?"

He pushed against the tree and stepped closer to her looming face. "Yeah I'm mad! You pulled a dirty trick on me asking about that dress, you know I couldn't lie even if I wanted to."

Lydia frowned, she hadn't thought about the dress in quite a while. Now that she considered it a little more, it did seem like a silly thing to get upset over; especially since he was actually being honest with her. "Oh. I'm sorry about that, B."

He grinned up at her, his sullen demeanor disappearing instantly with a smarmy grin to take its place. "Hey, babes, no hard feelings. What do you say you let me out and we show this town a real Halloween, huh?"

She frowned a little and shook her head. "No way, I know better than that. Besides, I'm going to be at the dorms for Halloween this year; it's on a school night."

"Aaaaw, c'mon! It'll be a blast!"

Lydia squinted at the tiny figure and bit her bottom lip. "A blast… What in the hell were you planning on blowing up, Beej?! Ah, absolutely not." And with that she was gone. She grabbed the oversized box to sort through in her room, where he could only appear as a glowy orb if she happened to be taking pictures.

Betelgeuse stood dejectedly in the little cemetery and shouted to deaf ears, "OH COME ON, I can make figures of speech you know!"

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I promise I'll be nicer to Betelgeuse soon!... Heh.