The Velveteen Beetle

Disclaimer: Um, none of it belongs to me, not the cartoon or the book.

A/N: I must be certifiably insane. But color me Looney Tunes, the show I watched so many years ago has again somehow sparked my interest, and made me stop to take notice and ponder. Anywho, make what you will of it, love it, hate it, don't care, just had to get it out of my system. Also, I've tried to do my homework but since it's been a long time since I saw any of the actual episodes and so I beg pardon to all you die-hard fans out there if I screw up royally on anything. Too, take note this is my take on a possible outcome of the whole "Lydia Growing Up and Out of the House" topic and that I do support the BJ/Lyds pairing so you can practically guess the outcome of this story. –insert sheepish smile-

"LLLLLLLYYYYYDDDDDIIIIIAAAA!"

"Lydia honey, please, we've got to get to the store now if we're ever going to get what you need!"

The raven-haired graduate sighed, practically visualizing her father's blood pressure rising along with the pitch of his stress-strained voice. The man really did need to just take a deep breath and chill one of these days. However, minding her parents' calls and reluctantly rising from her still cobweb styled comforter, Lydia couldn't help but find that the grip of despair that was slowly squeezing her heart tightened that much more at the sight of her room.

As dimly lit as always, what little light hit normally could be found neatly tucked away in seemingly increasing stacks of brown boxes, all labeled accordingly and with the same shipping address. Her college. The school she'd be going to at the end of the summer, said end only a mere two weeks away. And it would have been a momentous even extraordinarily happy time for Lydia, to be finally leaving the house, to have at last gained her full-freedom, to run off into the sunset with her dreams as her only guide, if not for one person.

That one certain person, who, she would bitterly admit, had not spoken nor had any contact whatsoever with her for the majority of the summer. That same person being her best friend, who appeared to care less that she would be leaving in two weeks, and whose face she had come to miss like she would a hand or a foot. Because life just wasn't the same without him. But did he even care about that? How much she missed and had missed him? Surely even he wasn't that heartless. She would know too, she'd only known him since her pre-teen years, and now was nearing nearly two decades into life. Anything there was to know about him she knew…surely he was missing her as much as she was him? Right?

"Lydia now!"

Sighing a final time, resigning her mind's haunting questions for another time, Lydia shouted back.

"I'm coming alright? Geez, where's the fire?"

Running a hurried hand through her now waist length hair, grabbing her purse, and jumping into her once abandoned shoes on the way out of her room, however, the girl-going-on-woman slammed the door in her haste, never noticing the once concealed, obviously rosy color-covered book fall from one of her still occupied books shelves.

Packing up her old dusty volumes had been only one of the many things on the Deetz's To-Do-List since Lydia had been accepted to her choice school, and was one of the many things that had been awfully neglected in getting done along with everything else.

But this book was unlike any of her others, and not just because of its cover.

Its illustrations and title depicting the pinkest and reddest tints of flora, just the cover itself boast of fairies and princesses, with the exception of the worn white-spotted rabbit in the center.

But no sooner had the book fallen to the floor, had the oval mirror of Lydia's dresser set begun to warp uncomfortably and inexplicably so.

Stopping its strange motions as soon as it'd begun, however, a lone not to mention striped occupant now stood in the center of the nearly stripped bare room.

Clad in large pin-stripes from head to toe, black pointed boots, a collared purple shirt and loosened black tie to match; his green crooked teeth were hid in a most forlorn look and his large green eyes downcast and cloudy with emotion.

Red-tipped fingers stuffed obviously in his pant pockets, his shoulders equally carelessly hunched, to say that this blue-tint-skinned man was anything but what he was would have hit more on the mark.

Already wild blonde hair appearing even more frazzled then usual, adding to his all together pitiful and melancholy demeanor, it couldn't have been more obvious; Beetlejuice was not himself, not in the slightest.

At last seeming to take notice of the drastic changes to his surroundings, the ghoul started slightly, apparently surprised at the change before again returning to his previous state of indifference.

He wasn't going to stay long, that much he knew…until he noticed a certain pink book.

A/N: Dun dun dun! Well, not really. :P Wanna know what 'ole BJ finds? And what's bothering him anyway to keep him for Lyds for so long? Figured it out already? Review and all will be revealed :)