Out of Sight, Out of Mind//A Beetlejuice Fanfiction

||Chapter Eight|| Scaring Plans

"So, how should we go about it?" asked Barbara with a simple snicker as the four of them sat together in the living room and discussed their plans to prank and mess with Lydia's dad and Delia. Both living adults had gone to the store to get food and wouldn't be back for at least a while, having told Lydia, the Maitlands, and Betelgeuse not to do anything stupid as they saw them all in the living room, staring at the both of them with unusual looks in their eyes and snickering hilariously and like nothing was going on. But they didn't know what was going to happen once they got back, did they?

"I'm not sure," her husband replied with a shrug. "But they said we couldn't do any sort of funny business. This isn't funny business! This is serious, pranking business!"

At that Barbara chuckled a little.

"Did I ever tell you you could make your faces look super scary? Because that will frighten Chuck and Debra a lot," said Betelgeuse with a wink. The Maitlands looked at him with both serious and annoyed expressions.

"No. We didn't know that," said Adam, raising an eyebrow.

"And we are not doing that," added Barbara with a groan.

Adam finished, "but you could teach us some other time. I'm sure seeing those faces would frighten even Lydia." He turned to the aforementioned teenager. "Right?"

"Nah. I'm totally cool with it. You guys couldn't even scare me with those faces, if you ever do them, even if you tried. Not even Betelgeuse can. Said he was going to at around midnight tonight but I brushed it off and said that it wouldn't be possible." Lydia leaned back and relaxed, closing her eyes.

"I still could though," smirked Betelgeuse. He made his face as scary as he could and stood up, creeping over towards Lydia. He stopped right next to where she was relaxing and spoke his loudest, "boo!"

Lydia opened one eye then closed it again, relaxing a bit more into the couch cushions that were propped up behind her. Barbara and Adam scooted up beside her and she snickered a little as she repositioned herself, rested her head against Barbara's chest area, and draped her legs across Adam's lap. Her arms were wrapped around Barbara's waist area and smiled softly and sweetly as she began to snore.

"You're not going to sleep, are you honey? We're in the middle of discussing how we're going to play a prank on your dad and Delia," Barbara said as Adam moved Lydia's legs off of his lap with his powers. Lydia woke up and yawned, but still kept her head resting against Barbara's chest and her arms wrapped around Barbara's waist.

"No." Lydia yawned again. "What makes you say that? I was just relaxing. That's all."

"I'm guessing you didn't get enough sleep last night, sweetie?" asked Barbara, looking a little concerned as she ran a hand through Lydia's hair.

"No. It's not that. I got plenty of sleep last night. The full eight hours."

"Lydia, last night you came upstairs to the attic at two in the morning because you didn't feel comfortable sleeping in your own bed and you wanted us to stargaze with you. It's not that we didn't want to, we'll go out onto the roof one evening in the coming days and stargaze together, I promise. Then when we tried to convince you to go back to bed, you insisted on sleeping in the attic. You fell asleep on the couch and we had to carry you back downstairs to your room and put you safely in your bed," said Adam, resting one of his hands against his forehead.

"That explains why I noticed I was back in my room and in my bed when I woke up again an hour later this morning," said Lydia out of realization.

"Can we just go back to discussing how to prank Charles and Delia or are we not going to do that now?" asked Barbara, now deciding to change the subject back to what it was they were talking about at first.

"Yes, we're still doing that," Adam replied. "At this point, I'm actually considering Betelgeuse's scary faces idea. If it doesn't frighten Lydia one bit as we have seen, then it's bound to scare them to pieces. They won't even be expecting it."

"But they could also decide not to trust the two of us with caring for Lydia when they're out on the weekends," pointed out Barbara. "And I love doing that. I'd hate if they suddenly stopped trusting us."

"Fair point." Adam rubbed the back of his head and glanced over at Barbara, who was again running a hand through a now napping Lydia's hair. "But they know us well enough to keep on trusting us even if we do scare them. Remember the last time we scared them? That didn't stop them from trusting us. Lydia's a good kid and I love caring for her as well. Even I fear that it may happen."

The last time they tried to scare Charles and Delia, they had thrown bed sheets over their heads and pretended to be ghosts in the many horror movies that Lydia seemed to like and showed them on occasion (it wasn't that they didn't mind her showing them those movies whenever, they loved spending time with her and they knew it made her happy whenever they wanted to sit down with her and watch some recent horror movie that Lydia seemed to have just discovered or one of those corny, cheesy old horror movies with the bad effects that came out decades ago.

They looked down and smiled as they began to hear Lydia start to talk in her sleep. And it sounded adorable even though they knew she was talking about paranormal stuff. Right now, it seemed that she was talking about them in her sleep. She was saying countless things like, "Adam, can you show me that trick again? It looked so cool and amazing when you did it." and "Barbara, can you do the same thing? I want to know if all ghosts can do that." She also seemed to be talking about herself as she was sleeping, as she occasionally said things like "Do it again, Lydia."

Smiling down at Lydia and then looking over at each other with matching expressions on their faces, Maitlands debated waking Lydia at a time like this. The teenager looked so peaceful when asleep, they didn't want to disturb her. They knew a nap was what the teenager needed right now and they were going to let her have it.

"Scary faces or naw?" asked Betelgeuse from above the Maitlands, interrupting things and nearly causing Lydia to awake from her nap (luckily she just stirred and fell right back to sleep). Both ghosts looked up towards the ceiling to find Betelgeuse in a relaxed position with his hands resting behind his head and his eyes closed (well, one of his eyes were closed).

"Affirmative on the scary faces," both ghosts said at once, elbowing each other and laughing in unison.

"Can you show us that scary face you tried to scare Lydia with?" asked Adam, both him and Barbara equally curious.

"Sure thing, Sexy!"