Cinderjuice
A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert
Author's Note: My apologies to anyone who came here and found chapter 18 in place of this chapter. I don't know what went wrong but hopefully there weren't many of you!
Chapter Two: Prince Charmless
For as long as he could remember, Beetlejuice had operated more or less without rules. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, to whom he wanted. He was the Ghost with the Most, and everyone knew it, and the Neitherworld was his shucked oyster. In the last half-dozen years, however, and almost without his being aware of it, things had changed. If he was honest with himself - not that he was a big fan of honesty - he'd have to admit that he had established two rules in his mind. Just two.
One, he wanted Lydia to be happy and he would do just about anything to ensure it. Whatever she needed, whatever she wanted, his juice was at her disposal. Two, God have mercy on anyone who hurt her, threatened to hurt her, or even just looked at her funny, because Beetlejuice himself certainly would not have mercy.
Then there was three, which wasn't a rule so much as it was a reality which had come to quietly assert itself. The fact was that Lydia could ask him for pretty much anything, and he'd have a really hard time saying no. That had been proven many times over. Heck, one time she almost persuaded him to tell his brother that he loved him, and that was a word he didn't generally extend to anyone.
(Well, okay, to Lydia herself he did. But that was one time and he wasn't really talking to her so she probably didn't hear it and it didn't really count.)
He hovered in the Roadhouse, pacing back and forth - though whether it really constituted pacing when he wasn't actually moving his legs was a matter of debate. Frankly, he would have enjoyed pondering that rather than what was occupying his thoughts. "This prom thing is a pickle," he mused, briefly transforming into a slightly rotting dill.
He was startled out of the shape by a knock at his door. "Yoo-hoo! Be-attle-juice!"
"Great. Like I don't have enough on my mind," he muttered, drifting over to open the door. "What's going on, bonehead?"
Jacques, with Ginger the spider close behind, strolled into the Roadhouse and looked around in curiosity. "Where ees Lydia? I 'alf expected to see -"
"She's not coming today," Beetlejuice replied shortly, letting the door slam.
"You okay, Beetlejuice?" Ginger's tap shoes scuttled across the floor, and she peered up at him from the vicinity of his knees. "You and Lydia didn't have a fight, didja? Didja?" Her eyes narrowed. "What did you do to her?"
"No, we didn't have a fight, Ginger, geez. She's just not feeling great."
"Well, zat would account for you being so grumpy," Jacques noted. "But eet ees unlike you to leave her alone in such circumstances."
"Yeah, well..." He folded his arms and floated sulkily across the room, only to be confronted by a framed and spiderweb-adorned photograph of Lydia. She wore driving goggles and was seated behind Doomie's wheel, her grin slightly manic.
Studying the contours of her face, he softened. "Lemme ask you guys something, since you're here and all..."
One ripple dissolve later...
"So Lydia wants to go to her senior prom," Ginger mused, "but she doesn't have anyone to take her? But she's such a sweetheart! Who wouldn't want to go with her?"
"That's about the size of it. Ugh, that stuck-up snot Claire Brewster! I'd like to juice the blonde right out of her hair. It's all her fault, y'know. Lyds didn't care two bits about the prom before she stuck her nose job into it."
"And you cannot take her, Be-attle-juice?" Jacques inquired.
"Even if I wanted to clean up that much, I don't think I could be in the same room with Claire for more than five minutes without juicing her to pieces," he admitted, "and Lydia knows it." He snorted. "I'd have to, I dunno, get my powers shut off for the night or something. Like that would ever happen."
Jacques and Ginger glanced at each other.
"Well," Jacques said after a moment, "there might be a way."
"Say what?"
"Jacques is right," said Ginger. "You could submit a wish to the Fairy Godfather!"
Beetlejuice blinked. "Don't these stories usually have a fairy godmother?"
"Mais oui," Jacques agreed. "But 'ere in the Neitherworld, we 'ave ze Fairy Godfather. 'E will examine your wish and decide whether or not to grant eet!"
"Yeah. He'll make you an offer that you can't refuse," Ginger added.
"I dunno, I'm not the biggest fan of unbreakable contracts," he mused. "I've seen enough of those. Maybe I should just forget the whole thing." He resumed float-pacing.
"But... what if Lydia finds someone else to take her?" Ginger ventured. "What'll you do then?"
Beetlejuice froze in midair.
What would he do?
"Psh," he said, "she wouldn't do that. I already promised we'll do whatever she wants that night, she's not gonna pass that up."
They looked at each other again. He wished they'd stop doing that. "You know," Jacques ventured, "Lydia is no longer ze petitemademoiselle she was when you first brought her to ze Neitherworld, mon ami. Perhaps she will forget ze prom zis time, but soon - well - she is growing up."
"She's changing," Ginger noted. "We've noticed it already."
"What do you mean, changing?" Beetlejuice demanded. "She hasn't changed! She's - she's - Lydia!"
"Beetlejuice, you've been friends for six years. Lydia's a young woman now, an adult. You really haven't noticed this?"
"No." He was lying, and they knew it. And he knew that they knew it. And maybe they even knew that he knew that they knew it. His head spun around briefly, and he reached up to grab it. "Yeesh. This is giving me a headache."
"So what are you gonna do, then?" Ginger asked.
"I dunno." He kicked at an imaginary stone. "This isn't like her. I bet it's - it's a phase she's going through. I mean, they do that, don't they? Teenagers? Go through phases? I went through one where nothing fazed me."
"I don't think -" Jacques began, but Beetlejuice cut him off.
"It's gonna be fine. You know, maybe I will go see this Godfather, and then I can take her to the stupid prom and get this all out of her system." He was starting to cheer up some. "And then once it's over, it'll be back to situation abnormal and everything'll be the way it was! Yeah! That's it!"
Jacques and Ginger looked at each other again.
"Will you stop doing that?" he demanded. "Just tell me how to find this Fairy Godfather guy."