Betelgeuse-A Beetlejuice Novel

Chapter 23: It's Lydia's Decision

Tea. Lydia looked at the tea in front of her. It felt like her whole life was just one big farce. Having her best friend's kid, losing her family and friends, losing her best friend forever, gaining everything back, and now what?

Having tea with Donny and Beetlejuice. Well, not quite. Beetlejuice wasn't drinking anything. Lydia didn't want to start the conversation, but Donny was oddly quiet. "Can someone please talk to me already?"

"Yes, I believe some conversation would be help-" Donny stopped mid-sentence as his pinky had a spurt of spark come from it and hit the table, singing it. "Oh, I just bought that."

Beetlejuice just hit his own face and rubbed his hand down it. "This isn't going to work long."

Lydia took a deep breath. "Listen." She looked at the two quiet guys in front of her. "I." She ticked her fingers off one by one. "Lost the ability to speak my G's. I was impregnated with what I thought was a ghost's son. I lost my family. I lost my friends. I lost the ability to be me." She pointed toward herself. "And BG never had the opportunity to be himself. So, please. Please, for one time, give me some good news!" She looked toward BJ. "Be straight. Please, I can't take any more of this. Is this all over? Am I losing you all over again?"

Aw. BJ looked toward the table. Lydia had gone through as much misery as him. Even though she went through child birth, he went through hell. Kind of a tie breaker there. He did kind of surprise her last night by taking over . . . uhh . . . "Okay, Babe, the truth is you're fine. We're fine." He tapped his foot. "We've been fine, until everyone else made it not fine."

"No more riddles!" Lydia exploded as she grabbed her head. "No more riddles. No more guessing. Just tell me. Do you get to stay?"

Yeah, that wasn't an easy answer. "It's . . . " He scratched his neck. "Okay, no more riddles. Yes, I physically will be here." He tried to smile. "Just not a hundred percent until you make some decisions."

"Make some decisions?"

"Yes, and when you decide what path you want to take, then you can go back to your old life too." Donny smiled at her. "It will be a happy day for everyone. Depending on your decision."

"My decision?" Lydia looked at each of them. Nothing had ever been her decision so far. "What are my decisions?"

"Before we get to that, I've got to tell you something. It's not gonna make you happy."

"If you can stay, then I'll deal with it," Lydia insisted. "What?"

"You never had to have BG or go through any of this. It was all pointless."

Lydia blinked. "What?"

This. This wasn't easy to tell her. Lydia had been hurt beyond measure already, and BJ had to hurt her one more time. "After I tell you this, you'll know everything, Lyd. No more secrets. The rest is up to you, however you want to go about it." Okay. He beat his tongue at the top of his mouth, feeling his throat go dry.

Donny was silent. The more he spoke and interacted the harder it was to contain the juice. This was all up to him. "We were separated because a kid between us had the power to basically make a second hell."

"Yes."

"It happened anyway."

"Yes."

"The WDP made you leave your whole old life behind and raise BG with nothing supernatural around him."

"Yes."

"Okay. Um, none of it mattered. They were just the steps to trick us to where we are now. The only thing that went wrong is BG's too big of a whimp." BJ caught the beetle bottle that was thrown at him from BG but didn't complain back to him. It wasn't the time. He had to do this and crush Lydia so she could move on.