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Alive (p. 75–80)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ghost Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Progress, Storytelling, and Justice
Racism and the Law
Childhood
Fear
Education
Summary
Analysis
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 18. The lawyer asks whether Officer Moore can’t distinguish between a child and an adult. When Officer Moore stumblingly claims that “it was dark,” the lawyer points out that it was daytime. Officer Moore says that Jerome was larger than an average 12-year-old. The lawyer asks whether Officer Moore is “prejudiced,” Officer Moore denies it, and someone in the courtroom yells, “Liar!” Jerome, standing beside Officer Moore, glances at Sarah—who is staring at the proceedings with her hands on her head.
Since bullies regularly beat Jerome up, readers have reason to disbelieve Officer Moore’s claim that Jerome was bigger than the average 12-year-old. Moreover, Officer Moore is obviously not telling the truth when he claims that “it was dark” when he shot Jerome. Thus, readers can infer that Officer Moore is trying to deny an obvious conclusion: that he misperceived Jerome as large and scary due to racial bias against Black boys.
Themes
When the lawyer asks whether Officer Moore has heard that “racial bias” can influence people’s behavior subconsciously, Officer Moore claims he’s “not racist.” The lawyer suggests that Officer Moore may have acted according to subconscious stereotypes about “large, threatening, dangerous” Black men. Then he asks how tall Officer Moore’s daughter (Sarah) is. The defense objects, and the judge sustains the objection. The prosecutor, rephrasing the point, asks whether Officer Moore would be shocked to learn that Jerome was five feet tall and weighed 90 pounds. Officer Moore is visibly shocked.
When Officer Moore says that he’s “not racist,” he presumably means that he wouldn’t consciously endorse racist attitudes. The lawyer is making a different point, however: even if Officer Moore wouldn’t consciously endorse racism, he still misperceived Jerome as “large, threatening, [and] dangerous”—even though Jerome was a short and skinny child—because of subconscious racial stereotypes. This distinction shows that making overt racism socially unacceptable isn’t enough to end racist practices. To make further progress, society must figure out how to diminish or end subconscious racism.
Themes
Sarah covers her ears and ducks her head. Suddenly, the other ghost (Emmett Till) appears and tries to take her hand. It doesn’t work, but Jerome realizes that Sarah can see the other ghost. The other ghost reaches out to Jerome and Jerome recoils, wondering what the gesture means. Officer Moore’s lawyer asks for a break, the judge agrees, and Jerome thinks that the judge potentially seeing Officer Moore’s lies matters in a way that Sarah seeing the other ghost doesn’t. Everyone but Jerome files out of the courtroom, though Sarah and the other ghost glance back at him.
Jerome thinks that what the judge sees matters more than what Sarah sees. In one sense, that’s true: whether the judge can see racial bias at work in Officer Moore’s shooting will determine the outcome of the hearing. In another sense, however, Jerome fails to account for the fact that as a child, Sarah’s perspective and the perspectives of other children her age will determine whether society progresses in the future. Thus, what Sarah sees or learns from this experience also matters.
Themes
Lost. Later, Jerome asks whether the other ghost (Emmett Till) told Sarah anything. She says no but suggests there’s a reason she sees him too. Then she speculates that maybe there’s an additional reason that Jerome sees him—and while Jerome cuts her off, claiming that he only sees the other ghost because he’s dead, he senses that she’s right. Jerome and Sarah hear yelling, door-slamming, and glass breaking downstairs. When Sarah comments that her father (Officer Moore) hates “administrative leave,” Jerome says that Pop would probably like a salary “for not working.”
“Administrative leave” is a term describing, essentially, a paid vacation from work. Often, after police-involved shootings, the officer who shot someone is placed on administrative leave while an investigation into the legitimacy of the shooting occurs. Jerome perceives Officer Moore’s administrative leave as a form of class privilege for law enforcement officers, since it allows them to continue making money “for not working” after they may have made a fatal mistake on the job.
Themes
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When Sarah starts crying, Jerome apologizes, but he doesn’t mean it. He thinks that while Sarah is smart, her life is essentially unreal, like something from a television show. His family’s poverty—for example, getting food from their church’s food pantry when Ma ran out of sick leave after her appendix burst—is “real.” He wonders whether Pop is aware that Officer Moore is still being paid. Jerome wants to throw a fit, but he knows it won’t affect anything. This is because Officer Moore killing him is also “real,” even if Sarah thinks her father is telling the truth.
Because Sarah’s family is relatively wealthy, privileged, and white, Jerome thinks of her life as less “real” than his. Similarly, when Jerome compares Sarah’s life to a television show, the novel is implying that his difficulty in acknowledging her reality comes from his lack of experience with privileged children: he has only seen girls like Sarah before on TV. This lack of experience is another downstream effect of racial and income segregation in U.S. schools.
Themes
Jerome examines Sarah’s books. Some have stickers declaring that they belong to Sarah Moore, and Jerome thinks how much Kim would enjoy owning a book and writing her name in it, rather borrowing every book she reads from the library. Seeing a book titled Peter Pan, he asks Sarah whether it’s good. When she claims it’s the “best,” Jerome opens it and reads the first line: “All children, except one, grow up.” Jerome, confused, asks whether Peter Pan dies. Blushing, Sarah explains that Peter Pan just stays a child because he wants to.
Here the novel reminds readers that children’s access to books is often determined by their family’s wealth—another detail suggesting that poverty can seriously impact children’s ability to educate themselves. Peter Pan (1911), also called Peter and Wendy, is a classic of children’s literature by Scottish author J.M. Barrie (1860—1937). Its first line fails to account for all the children, like Jerome, who don’t grow up because they are killed due to bigotry. Ghost Boys implies that Peter Pan fails to represent the dangerous childhoods of disadvantaged children.
Themes
As if summoned, the other ghost (Emmett Till) appears. Jerome, noticing his round cheeks, tells him he looks like a chipmunk. Sarah and the other ghost laugh. Then the other ghost asks who wants to stay a kid. Suddenly feeling less lonely and fearful, Jerome admits that he wanted to grow up as quickly as possible, because being a child means being ordered around, being bullied, behaving yourself, and so on. He planned to become a great basketball player. The other ghost shares that he wanted to be the first African-American player on the Chicago Cubs. Sarah asks when that was, and the other ghost says it was 1955.
In Peter Pan, Peter never wants to grow up, implying a privileged view of childhood in which being a child means lacking responsibility and enjoying oneself. By contrast, Jerome’s childhood took place in a dangerous neighborhood and a violent school where he felt responsible for his little sister and his Ma and Grandma’s peace of mind. Again, Ghost Boys illustrates that childhood is fundamentally different and harder for children who face racism or poverty.
Themes
Jerome, horrified at how long the other ghost (Emmett Till) has been dead, thinks that he wouldn’t mind staying a child forever if only he were alive. On the cover of Peter Pan, Peter is flying—and Jerome remembers how he believed he could “fly from a bullet.” Sarah starts crying, and Jerome demands that she not pity him. When she offers to help him and the other ghost “like Wendy helped Peter,” Jerome asks whether Peter was white. The question seems to confuse her. Jerome, yelling, asks what Sarah will be when she grows up, since she’s “the only one who’s going to grow up.”
The problem with Peter Pan isn’t that it fails to represent children’s aspirations or magical thinking: Jerome, too, thought he could “fly” like Peter. The problem is that children of color and poor children are systematically deprived of the childlike play and freedom Peter enjoys: Jerome has to think about “fly[ing] from a bullet,” not flying for fun. Thus, when Sarah wants to compare herself and Jerome to Wendy and Peter, Jerome points out that the analogy won’t work. Peter, after all, was white, and this implies he had some privilege. When Sarah doesn’t understand, Jerome brings up how Sarah’s whiteness has protected her: of the three children in the room, she is the only one still alive.
Themes
The other ghost (Emmett Till) puts a hand on Jerome’s arm—and Jerome, to his surprise, can feel it. The other ghost tells Jerome that Sarah is becoming different and that he has come to help both Jerome and Sarah. Jerome denies that the other ghost can help him: all he wants is to “move on” and escape his family’s suffering. When Sarah insists that Officer Moore’s motive for killing Jerome matters, Jerome asks whether Sarah thinks so because the motive could comfort her. When she starts crying, Jerome “feel[s] like the bullies [he] hate[s].”
The other ghost’s assurance that Sarah is becoming different—and that he intends to help her—implies that Sarah’s transformation from ignorance to understanding will lead to social progress in the future. When Jerome feels like a bully for questioning Sarah’s motives, it implies that Jerome’s own bullies might have been lashing out due to personal pain the way that Jerome is doing—suggesting that poverty, fear, and violence might motivate bullying rather than any intrinsic moral failing.
Themes
Jerome turns to the other ghost (Emmett Till) and demands to know whether they’re both stuck somehow. The other ghost ushers Jerome to the window and tells him to look. Slowly, thousands of shadowy ghost boys begin to appear on the street, staring up at the window. When Jerome expresses confusion, the other ghost explains that the ghosts are “our people.” Jerome punches the wall, to no effect. Sarah whispers, “Black boys,” and covers her mouth. After a moment, she asks the other ghost whether all the ghosts outside were killed like him and Jerome. The other ghost confirms that they were.
Jerome is aware of racism and how dangerous police can be to Black people. Nevertheless, up to this point, he has been thinking of his shooting primarily as a private problem affecting him and his family. Similarly, Sarah has been thinking about the shooting as a question of Officer Moore’s personal goodness or badness. Seeing the ghosts becomes a turning point for both characters: it highlights that Jerome’s shooting is part of a long-standing pattern of violence against Black children.
Themes
Jerome, recalling Peter Pan’s first line, says he’d do anything if it meant he could grow up. Sarah shoves her face into a pillow—and Jerome, though frustrated with her crying, awkwardly compliments the pillow. Then, remembering that kindness never helped him, he throws Peter Pan across the room. From downstairs, Officer Moore calls up to ask Sarah whether she’s okay. She calls back that she’s fine, but she looks scared. When the other ghost (Emmett Till) looks disapproving, Jerome asks why he needs help from “a white girl.” The other ghost suggests that Jerome might be meant to help Sarah instead—but Jerome declares the idea “sick,” given that Sarah’s father murdered him. He demands to know the other ghost’s identity. The other ghost replies, “Emmett Till.”
Jerome refers to Sarah as “a white girl” rather than by name, suggesting that he still sees her as a stereotype rather than an individual person. When the other ghost states that perhaps Jerome is meant to help Sarah, it implies that Jerome’s shooting is supposed to change Sarah’s political consciousness somehow, making her less prejudiced than her father. However, Jerome derides this as “sick,” since he would prefer to be a living boy than a dead lesson for someone else. When the other ghost explicitly identifies himself as Emmett Till, the novel again draws a connection between historical violence against Black Americans in the form of lynching and more recent police-involved shootings of Black children.
Themes
Jerome, remembering how Grandma compared him to Emmett Till, asks whether he’s the other boy from Chicago who was murdered. Emmett confirms that he was murdered in the South in 1955. When Jerome says, “Everybody knew the South was dangerous then,” Emmett tells him that the South remains dangerous today. Jerome, frustrated, vanishes, thinking that he died unfairly, close to his own home in the North, whereas Emmett acted like an idiot traveling to the “old South.”
Here Jerome is blaming the victim, stating that “everyone knew the South was dangerous” when Emmett Till traveled there and thus suggesting that Emmett Till is partly responsible for his own lynching. Jerome’s willingness to blame the victim shows his overwhelming frustration at his own death. Emmett Till’s claim that the South remains dangerous indicates that the U.S. has made less progress in combatting racial violence since 1955 than Americans would like to think.
Themes
Real. Jerome thinks it would be “real” to finish his education, get a job, help his family financially, and maybe find a girlfriend. Instead, he sits with Emmett Till on his church’s steps, miserable, realizing that his death is also real. Emmett Till tells Jerome how baseball was real to him, as was college: his mother, an honor-roll student and later a teacher, wanted him to get a professional job more prestigious than hers. Jerome, intending to be cruel, says kids play basketball now and hero-worship Michael Jordan, LeBron James, or Steph Curry—baseball is passé. When Emmett Till admits he doesn’t recognize any of those players, Jerome feels like a bully.
When Jerome and Emmett Till reminisce about the adulthoods they wanted to have, it emphasizes that their lives were unjustly stolen from them when they were only children. Emmett Till’s inability to recognize the names of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Steph Curry—basketball players famous in the late 20th and 21st centuries—emphasizes this point: the historical Emmett Till was born in 1941 and likely would have known of all three players if he had lived.
Themes
When Emmett Till—talking about baseball and basketball—says that culture changes over time, Jerome replies that people should change. Emmett Till expands on Jerome’s insight, saying that while people do change, they don’t do it quickly enough in large enough numbers, or they backslide and “keep hurting.”
Implicitly, Emmett Till and Jerome agree that people haven’t changed enough because white adults are still killing Black children in the U.S. Emmett Till suggests that many individual people have changed—but change needs to be large-scale and consistent to make a meaningful difference.
Themes
Emmett Till shares that while Chicago was safer in his childhood, his mother still kept a close eye on him, which his polio made easier for her. When Jerome asks what polio is, Emmett Till explains that it was a disease that gave him a limp and made him stutter, whistling when he tried to pronounce letters like W.
The historical Emmett Till was lynched after speaking to and supposedly whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Later reporting suggested that he sometimes whistled due to a speech impediment. The mention of the speech impediment here suggests that Emmett may have been killed because white men misinterpreted his harmless behavior as predatory, in the same way that Officer Moore misinterpreted Jerome’s harmless toy as a gun.
Themes
Abruptly, Jerome asks how Emmett Till died, thinking that his “softness” would make him an even bigger target for bullying at Jerome’s school than Jerome is. Emmett Till says that Jerome isn’t prepared for the whole story; he’ll only say that he visited his cousins in Mississippi—and it was a bad decision. When Jerome expresses frustration at this cryptic answer, Emmett Till says it’s important that Sarah can see him and asks whether Jerome has “anything better to do” than help her. To himself, Jerome admits he doesn’t.
The reference to Emmett Till’s “softness” reminds readers that he was a young, physically nonthreatening teen when he was lynched—a reminder that emphasizes how racism robs Black kids of their childhoods. Emmett Till’s implicit claim that Jerome has “nothing better to do” than help Sarah suggests that while Jerome’s death was wholly unjust, all he can do now is try to use his death to change minds and pursue progress.
Themes
Me & Sarah. Jerome attends the preliminary hearing again. Protestors and police in riot gear are thronging outside the court. He ends up leaving for Sarah’s house because she alleviates his loneliness. Protestors are picketing her house too. He mentions his suspicion that a white man murdered Emmett Till, and Sarah asks whether it was a police officer. Jerome admits he doesn’t know.
The historical Emmett Till was killed not by police officers but by two white men acting as vigilantes to avenge an imagined slight to a white woman. Jerome and Sarah’s exchange about whether Emmett Till was killed by a police officer reminds readers that the U.S. history of violence against Black people includes but is broader than police-involved shootings.
Themes
Jerome asks about Sarah recognizing his ghost from a photo. Sarah says that she’s only seen one photo because Officer Moore and her mother wanted her not to “see it.” When Jerome echoes, “See it?”, Sarah realizes there might be a video of the shooting and heads for her computer. Jerome—recognizing that the video could prove to Sarah that her father lied—warns her that she maybe shouldn’t watch it: despite everything, he doesn’t want her to be harmed emotionally. Sarah, resolute, searches for the video anyway.
The lynching of Emmett Till became famous and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement (1954—1968) in part because his mother demanded an open-casket funeral and newspapers publicized photographs of his brutalized corpse. Similarly, many incidents of police brutality and police-involved shootings have become famous and spurred protests in the late 20th and 21st centuries because video footage of them was available to the public. When Jerome warns Sarah not to watch the video, the novel is acknowledging the horror of recorded violence—and thus its power to change minds and spur progress.
Themes
Sarah and Jerome play a video of Jerome being shot from a police car. Sarah, horrified, questions why Officer Moore gave Jerome no verbal warning before shooting him. As the video plays, they see Officer Moore and his partner just watching Jerome’s body for whole minutes. Jerome remembers lying on the ground, unable to move his head to see where the toy gun landed but hearing Ma and Kim screaming. Sarah finds an article that claims the EMTs arrived “too late.” Jerome wonders why the person who took the video didn’t help him or call the police—and then wonders whether it’s possible to “call the police on the police.”
The details of Jerome’s shooting seem inspired by details of real police-involved shootings. For example, the police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Timothy Loehmann, did so before fully exiting his police car, and neither Loehmann nor his partner offered Tamir Rice first aid. These parallels emphasize that though Jerome is fictional, the kind of violence he suffers at the hands of police is all too real. When Jerome asks whether you can “call the police on the police,” the novel emphasizes how hard it is to find justice when law enforcement itself is biased.
Themes
Sarah, looking grim, apologizes to Jerome repeatedly and wishes she could hug him and resurrect him. She says that Officer Moore “didn’t really see” Jerome. Jerome, snapping back, asks whether Officer Moore even sees his daughter: did Sarah’s father make good on his offer to take her skating, or is he just stewing in self-pity? Then, embarrassed, Jerome apologizes for his words. Sarah says it’s fine: she “understand[s].” Jerome, surprised, realizes she’s telling the truth. He spies Emmett Till’s ghost in his peripheral vision and wishes he and Sarah could hug.
Sarah’s claim that Officer Moore “didn’t really see” Jerome emphasizes what the novel has already suggested: due to subconscious racial bias, Officer Moore didn’t see 12-year-old Jerome as the child he was. Instead, Officer Moore saw a stereotype of a threatening, dangerous Black man. Having seen the video, Sarah “understand[s]” her father’s prejudice on a deeper level—which suggests that watching violence against Black people from the relatively objective perspective of a camera can bring home the reality of racist violence and thus effect social change.
Themes
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 18. The lawyer questions the 911 operator, a redheaded young woman who says that a caller told her “a boy, no, a man” had a gun. The lawyer points out that the call transcript contains the phrase “toy gun” and asks whether the operator told the police that the gun was a toy. The operator, nervous, says that she doesn’t know why she didn’t. The lawyer asks whether she has heard of Tamir Rice, another boy killed by police who thought his toy gun was real. The defense objects, the judge sustains it, and the questioning ends. Jerome feels bad for the operator; he believes the police would have killed him even if she had said the gun was a toy.
During the investigation of Tamir Rice’s shooting, a recording of the 911 call that brought Tamir Rice to the police’s attention revealed that the caller indicated Tamir Rice’s gun probably wasn’t real—but the dispatcher failed to relay this information to the police sent to the scene. The phrase “a boy, no, a man” indicates how unwilling many adults in the novel are to see Black children as children. In this scene, the 911 operator’s failure to mention that the toy gun was a toy to the police both strengthens the parallels between Jerome’s case and Tamir Rice’s and highlights the operator’s failure to communicate that Jerome was just a kid.
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Civil Rights. Jerome goes with Sarah to her school, which has a predominantly white student body and very good facilities (by contrast, Jerome notes that his school lacked a librarian). He thinks that he—as well as the other students at his school—would’ve enjoyed their education a lot more if they could have gone to school in such a nice building.
The whiteness and wealthiness of Sarah’s school emphasizes that racial segregation in the U.S. school system both harms students of color materially and hinders all students from meeting and understanding people who are different from themselves.
Themes
In the library, the librarian, who has a nametag reading Ms. Penny, asks Sarah whether she ought to be in class. When Sarah doesn’t answer, Ms. Penny asks whether she needs to speak to the counselor—and Sarah says no, she just wants to sit in the library forever. Ms. Penny suggests that that would get dull. Sarah laughs—and then blurts that kids in her class are praising Officer Moore for being a “good cop,” praise that can’t be right because her father shot a child. Ms. Penny hugs Sarah.
Sarah’s school has a counselor to attend to the children’s emotional needs—something that Jerome’s school seemingly didn’t have, which may partly explain the bullying that interfered with Jerome’s education. Sarah’s claim that her father can’t be a “good cop” because he shot a child marks a turning point for her character: after seeing the video of Jerome’s shooting, she is now willing to overtly condemn Officer Moore rather than claiming he must have made a mistake.
Themes
Jerome asks Sarah to ask about Emmett Till. When Sarah does, Ms. Penny says Sarah can learn about him later. Sarah asks why she can’t learn about him now. Ms. Penny says that she’ll be taught about Emmett Till when her curriculum covers civil rights, which will happen “bit by bit” in social studies or as part of Black History Month. When Sarah points out that she’s already in seventh grade and has never learned anything about Emmett Till, Ms. Penny suggests that his case might be too awful for middle-schoolers because it involves “grown men kill[ing] a child.” Sarah retorts: “Like my dad?”
Ms. Penny’s claim that Sarah will learn about the Civil Rights Movement (1954—1968) “bit by bit” implies that Sarah’s school doesn’t have a concerted curriculum on the Civil Rights Movement at all. When Ms. Penny says that Emmett Till’s story is too horrible for middle-schoolers, the novel may be suggesting that Sarah’s school doesn’t teach much about the Civil Rights Movement because it doesn’t want its predominantly white students to feel upset or guilty. Sarah’s retort, “Like my dad?”, makes clear that Emmett Till’s story is directly relevant to her life and so it is counterproductive for adults to keep it from her.
Themes
When Ms. Penny starts apologizing, Jerome shouts that she was right: adults killing children is awful. Sarah, glancing at Jerome, says that Emmett Till was from Chicago, the same city where Jerome was shot. Ms. Penny admits it but points out that Emmett Till’s murder occurred in the South six decades ago. When Sarah asks why that matters, Ms. Penny says that the case was an inciting incident for the Civil Rights Movement. Sarah asks whether that means Martin Luther King, Jr. Ms. Penny agrees but also mentions Rosa Parks, desegregation, and the Voting Rights Act.
Sarah draws a parallel between Jerome’s killing and Emmett Till’s by pointing out that both victims were from Chicago. Ms. Penny tries to deny the parallel by claiming that Emmett Till’s killing happened in a different place a long time ago—as if too much progress, including the Civil Rights Movement, has occurred since then for the incidents to be related. The only figure that Sarah knows from the Civil Rights Movement is Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929—1968), which reveals how little her school has taught her about the subject
Themes
Sarah asks whether Ms. Penny is saying that Jerome’s death doesn’t matter as much. Ms. Penny says no—when the Civil Rights Movement began, she was a child from a Jewish family that also suffered from prejudice; people from many different demographic groups worked to make society better. She explains that Mrs. Till was a courageous woman who made sure Emmett Till had an open-casket funeral, writing, “Let the world see what I have seen.” Right away, Sarah asks to see. Though shaken, Ms. Penny mentions that she was Sarah’s age when she saw Emmett Till’s body and goes to the computer to do an image-search. Jerome—who thinks what a body looks like doesn’t matter if it’s already dead—walks out of the school into the sunlight, but he hears Sarah weeping loudly from inside the building.
When Ms. Penny quotes Mrs. Till as writing, “Let the world see what I have seen,” she is suggesting that it is important for society to bear witness to victims of racist violence—encouraging people to bear witness helps educate people and make society better. Sarah understands what Ms. Penny is saying and immediately asks to “bear witness” to Emmett Till. Notably, Jerome doesn’t feel that he needs to “bear witness” in the same way. This suggests that Jerome, as a victim of racist violence, doesn’t need to learn the lesson that seeing Emmett Till’s body will teach Sarah.
Themes
Wander. Jerome wanders randomly, wondering why he’s still haunting the living world. Suddenly, Emmett Till appears beside him. Jerome is annoyed, not wanting to hang out with a ghost from long ago. He wonders whether Ma, Pop, Grandma, and Kim will ever move on from his death; he both fears and hopes that they will. Getting angry, he shouts at Emmett Till to go away—and then asks why they were both murdered. Another ghost in a gray hoodie appears up ahead; when Jerome asks who he is, Emmett Till replies that he was killed in Florida six years prior. Jerome thinks how much he hates Peter Pan.
Ghost Boys was published in 2018. Six years prior, in 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Sanford, Florida by 28-year-old neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman. He was wearing a hoodie when Zimmerman killed him. When Jerome, seeing Trayvon Martin, thinks that he hates Peter Pan—supposedly about the only boy who never grows up—he is really hating a privileged worldview that ignores how frequently Black children and young adults are killed and never get to grow up.
Themes
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 18. Officer Moore, with red eyes and a fallen face, takes the stand. The lawyer asks him whether he told Jerome he was police, asked Jerome to drop the gun, or asked Jerome to put up his hands. Officer Moore says no to each question. When the lawyer asks whether Officer Moore shot from the police car before the car stopped, Officer Moore first waffles and then says he did, because “a police car is a coffin” and Jerome was brandishing a firearm.
Officer Moore testifies that he shot Jerome with extreme haste because “a police car is a coffin,” suggesting that he was motivated by irrational fear for his own safety when he fired without announcing himself or asking Jerome to drop his “weapon.” That he didn’t stop to think whether Jerome’s “gun” was a toy emphasizes how Officer Moore’s fear caused him to ignore that Jerome was a child.
Themes
The lawyer—over the defense’s objection—asks whether Officer Moore gave Jerome any medical help or called 911. The judge sustains the objection, but Officer Moore still admits he didn’t give Jerome any medical help. Sarah and her mother hug. Pop holds Ma as she falls against him, but Jerome doesn’t think Pop or anyone can make it right. As the judge adjourns the hearing for the day, Jerome leaves, feeling powerless to comfort his family.
The judge sustains the defense’s objection to the prosecuting lawyer’s question, which means that Officer Moore doesn’t have to answer. Nevertheless, Officer Moore chooses to admit that he failed to give Jerome medical help—implying that Officer Moore believes he did something wrong in not helping Jerome after he shot him and realized he was a child. Still, he continues to defend his choice to shoot in the first place.
Themes
Carlos. Grandma has been walking Kim to and from school every day. As of January, Carlos has been walking Kim into school and accompanying her and Grandma back to their apartment from school—standing in for Jerome. Though Kim is even thinner than she used to be and very serious, she sometimes smiles or laughs when Carlos tells her jokes, draws her pictures, or does cartwheels for her. He tells her stories about San Antonio, but when she asks whether he’ll move back, he says no—he’s staying in Chicago.
Officer Moore’s decision to shoot Jerome stole both Jerome’s childhood and his future. Jerome’s shooting has also stolen some of Carlos and Kim’s remaining childhood innocence: as both children grieve Jerome, Carlos tries to take on a more adult and protective role in Kim’s life, and Kim becomes much more somber.
Themes
One day, Grandma tells Carlos that he’s a “good boy” and asks whether he’ll walk Kim home by himself. He volunteers to walk her to school too, but Grandma says she’s not “ready” yet. When she tells Carlos that she trusts him, he acts proud—but when she comments that she didn’t know Jerome had such a good friend, he jogs off to join Kim up ahead. Jerome, watching Carlos, notices how mournful Carlos is—much sadder than he was when Jerome met him.
Grandma has previously described Jerome as a “good boy.” That she now applies the same description to Carlos suggests that she is coming to see him as another grandson. Carlos flees when Grandma mentions his friendship with Jerome, implying that he feels extreme guilt over Jerome’s death. Jerome also notes that Carlos is very sad, another indication that Jerome’s shooting has destroyed some of Carlos’s childhood optimism and innocence.
Themes
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 19. On the hearing’s second day, Jerome notices that courtroom benches resemble church pews. He also notices that Sarah isn’t at court—he suspects that her parents are trying to shield her from the truth, not knowing she already understands Jerome more than Officer Moore did. Emmett Till appears, and his presence seems to give Grandma subconscious comfort.
The comparison Jerome draws between courtroom benches and church pews implies that justice is sacred—one reason why it is so tragic when law enforcement professionals behave unjustly. The implication that Sarah’s parents have kept her out of court hints that they want to “protect” her from upsetting truths—even though she needs to know the truth to understand her own family’s situation. They aren’t aware that Sarah has already “born witness” to Jerome’s shooting online and to Emmett Till’s lynching through research at school.
Themes
When Officer Moore takes the stand, the lawyer asks why Jerome was shot “in the back.” Reporters and activists in the courtroom erupt—though Jerome realizes that everyone must already have known from the video that Officer Moore shot him in the back. The judge calls for order, and the lawyer asks why Officer Moore fired when Jerome was fleeing. Officer Moore claims that he was “in fear for [his] life”—and repeats it even when the lawyer reminds him he’s under oath. Jerome realizes that Officer Moore is telling the truth and wonders whether a feeling can be true and false at the same time.
Up to this point, Jerome has suspected that Officer Moore was lying on the stand. Now, suddenly, he comes to believe that Officer Moore is telling the truth: he really was “in fear for [his] life” even though he shot Jerome “in the back” while Jerome was running away. What Jerome is realizing is that Officer Moore’s fear was both true and false: truly felt but based on false beliefs motivated by racist stereotypes.
Themes
Roam. Afterward, Jerome is glad not to see Emmett Till or Sarah. He’s heard the phrase “rest in peace,” but it hasn’t applied to his own afterlife. He wanders around Chicago, seeing beautiful neighborhoods and public attractions he’s never visited before. He regrets not learning that there was more to the world than his own neighborhood during his lifetime. He has stopped following Ma and Pop around: their numb, deadened misery is too painful. He doesn’t want Ma and Pop to choke off all their emotions. He prefers Grandma and Kim’s vivid remembrances of him and willingness to cry—though when they walk past where he was shot on the way to school, he refuses to look at it.
In death, Jerome is coming to realize that poverty prevented him from learning many things about the world around him while he was alive, a realization that ties into earlier representations of his poorly resourced school. Jerome appreciates Grandma and Kim’s willingness to remember him, which implies that he wants people to “bear witness” to his life and death—yet it is still too painful for him to “bear witness” to his own killing, as symbolized by his unwillingness to look at the place where he was shot.
Themes
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 19. The courtroom returns from its lunch break. The judge announces that Jerome’s death was a horrible, regrettable event—but given the difficulties inherent to policing, Jerome’s “realistic-looking” toy gun, and Officer Moore’s “fear for his life,” the judge has decided not to charge Officer Moore.
The judge decides that Jerome’s toy gun and Officer Moore’s “fear for his life” absolve Officer Moore of criminal guilt for killing Jerome—even though Jerome was shot in the back while fleeing, and even though his gun was a toy. In other words, the judge is willing to endorse Officer Moore’s choices even though they are based on subconscious racial stereotypes about Black boys as highly threatening and as being more adult, stereotypes symbolized by the toy mistaken for a real weapon. The judge’s decision illustrates how the law can be applied in a racist way even when laws themselves have no racist content.
Themes
School & After. One day in May, six weeks before the end of school, Carlos is walking Kim and Grandma to school and helping Kim carry her backpack—when Jerome sees Eddie, Mike, and Snap waiting on the school stairs. Grandma is worried about the boys beginning to bully Kim (as is Jerome), but Carlos tells her that it’s fine and takes Kim’s hand. Jerome fears that Carlos will pull out another toy gun, which might put Kim in danger if police officers arrive.
Before Officer Moore shot him, Jerome was more afraid of bullies than of anyone else. Now Jerome is less afraid of bullies than of police, who might use a toy gun as a pretext to harm Kim. This change emphasizes that racist stereotypes endanger Black children, even little girls like Kim. It also illustrates how Jerome’s experience of fatal police violence has taken his childhood innocence, making his fears more bleakly adult.
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Carlos tells Eddie, Mike, and Snap, “Kim es mi familia.” When Eddie steps toward them, Jerome yells in fear. Then Eddie offers Carlos his hand and replies, loudly so everyone can hear, “Bueno. Con respeto.” Eddie tells Kim that he’s sorry about Jerome, and Kim thanks him. Then Carlos, Eddie, Mike, and Snap walk Kim to class. Jerome thinks they’ve come to a “truce.” He cries, though not from sadness: he’s glad that Carlos is helping Kim and Grandma heal from their grief, but he wonders when he, Emmett Till, and the “other ghost boys” will be allowed to move on. His afterlife still seems unjust to him.
“Kim es mi familia” means “Kim is my family.” Carlos’s declaration indicates that he has assumed Jerome’s role as Kim’s big brother, presumably because he feels guilty about Jerome’s death. Eddie’s response to Carlos, “Bueno. Con respeto,” literally translates to “Good. With respect.” Eddie is loudly approving of Carlos’s decision to take care of Kim—in Spanish, a language he wasn’t previously willing to speak at school. Eddie’s actions in this scene show that while he bullied Jerome in the past, he isn’t a wholly bad person; he is capable of becoming a better person. Though glad that Eddie and Carlos have called a “truce” due to his death, Jerome is unhappy overall: he still doesn’t understand why he’s haunting the living world.
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Walking Kim home, Carlos makes drumsticks out of a tree branch and plays percussion on random objects for her. Kim tells him to play faster and starts dancing happily along with the drums. Then, suddenly, she stops, becomes serious, and tells Carlos he needs to “tell Grandma.” When Carlos, cringing, agrees, Jerome pities him.
By implication, what Carlos needs to “tell Grandma” is that he gave Jerome the toy gun that Jerome was holding when Officer Moore shot him. Carlos needs to “tell” because, despite his loss of innocence after Jerome’s death, he is still a child accountable to adults for misbehavior.
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Tell No Lies. Jerome, on his apartment’s steps, hears various neighborhood people telling stories. Their stories seem to make the neighborhood a brighter place. He thinks that Kim is correct: Carlos has to tell his own story about the toy gun to Grandma, in the same way that Emmett Till will eventually tell his own story to Jerome. Jerome wonders whether he’s haunting the world to prepare himself to hear Emmett Till’s story.
Jerome parallels Carlos’s story about the toy gun and Emmett Till’s story about his own murder. This parallel suggests that Jerome thinks Carlos needs to tell Grandma about the toy gun not to admit guilt but to be heard and understood, the way Jerome wants to understand Emmett Till. The parallel implies that violent racism—which refuses to recognize children of color as children, a refusal symbolized by the toy gun—has indirectly harmed Carlos and that he needs adult support to help process his trauma.
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Jerome keeps seeing ghosts, including one, holding a toy gun, who might be “Tamir.” The ghosts make him think that people’s lives never really terminate. One night, Emmett Till appears—and Jerome realizes that he seems to be the “leader” of the ghosts but probably isn’t the oldest. Others must have died during slavery and early KKK lynchings. Jerome realizes that he’s part of a “crew”: “Everything isn’t all about me.”
“Tamir” is another reference to Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black boy whom a police officer shot to death after mistaking his toy for a real firearm. The novel’s repeated references to Tamir Rice emphasize that its story of police violence against a Black child has real-life correlates. Jerome’s realization, “Everything isn’t all about me,” suggests that Jerome has begun to see his own killing as part of a long historical pattern stretching back to slavery in the U.S.
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Jerome again asks Emmett Till how he died, while looking around his neighborhood, noticing how “poor” and “segregated” it is, and wondering why he scared the police officers. Emmett Till asks whether Jerome is prepared. When Jerome nods, Emmett Till says that he and his cousins wanted to go to Mississippi to visit his great-uncle and -aunt and their three boys, Simeon, Robert, and Maurice. Emmett Till’s great-uncle was a sharecropper who lived in a “shack,” but the cousins didn’t mind crowding in. Emmett Till’s mother used to say she moved away from Mississippi to escape the sharecroppers’ poverty, but Emmett Till liked how he could explore with his Mississippi cousins in a way his mother wouldn’t allow in Chicago.
Jerome’s realization that his neighborhood is “poor” and “segregated” highlights how much he has learned about the world since he died and—by implication—how little he was able to learn while alive due to his neighborhood’s and school district’s lack of resources. The beginning of Emmett Till’s story—that he and his cousins didn’t mind crowding together and liked exploring Mississippi together—emphasizes the boys’ youth, optimism, and innocence.
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Emmett Till says that he took a train to Mississippi that arrived on August 21, and he died a week later. Suddenly, Jerome is pulled into the story as if it were a film: he sees Emmett Till playing with his cousins by a river. Emmett Till’s hat drops, unnoticed, by the bank. The oldest boy, Maurice, suggests that they go into town—but warns Emmett Till to call white people “ma’am” or “sir” and never to make eye contact with them. When Emmett Till protests at Maurice ordering him around, Maurice reminds him that they’re in Mississippi and tells him to get out of white people’s way on the sidewalk. Emmett Till, under his breath, says that he doesn’t fear white people.
The warnings that Emmett Till receives from Maurice highlight for the reader the white-supremacist culture of Mississippi in 1955. During this time, Jim Crow laws were in effect, legally mandating racial segregation and discriminating against Black Americans; Black Americans who failed to show deference to white people might become targets of racist violence. Emmett Till’s muttering that he doesn’t fear white people makes clear that he’s an innocent child: he doesn’t understand that he has good reason to be afraid of racist white violence.
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In town is a store called Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Maurice explains that the clientele in Bryant’s is primarily Black; the white people drive to another town with better options. When Emmett Till asks whether Bryant’s sells bubble gum, one of the cousins warns him not to say anything. Emmett retorts that he talks to white people plenty in Chicago and asks whether the cousin thinks he’s “scared.” (Jerome, watching, begs Emmett Till not to do anything foolish.) The cousins try to explain that in the South, white people don’t see Black people as human, but Emmett enters Bryant’s anyway.
Emmett Till wants to buy bubble gum and resents that his cousins think he might be “scared”—desires and fears that clearly mark him as a child. His cousins’ attempts to explain that white people won’t see him as human show how the extreme, legally mandated racism of the Jim Crow South has deprived them of childish innocence.
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Inside Bryant’s, Emmett Till selects a piece of bubble gum, hands the white woman behind the counter a penny, says goodbye, and leaves. (Jerome sees the woman’s infuriated, loathing expression. He yells at Emmett Till to run). Outside, Emmett Till tells one of the cousins that he said goodbye to the white woman and handed her a penny. That cousin, horrified, immediately informs the others that Emmett addressed and initiated physical contact with a white woman. Emmett Till’s Chicago cousins don’t understand what’s wrong, but Maurice says they need to leave.
Emmett Till’s Mississippi cousins immediately understand that his having interacted with a white woman puts him in danger of racist violence, due to racist stereotypes about Black boys and men as sexual predators and white-supremacist narratives about white men needing to “protect” white women. By contrast, Emmett Till’s Chicago cousins understand none of this, showing that their lesser exposure to legally mandated racism has kept them ignorant of ugly truths about white supremacy.
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The white woman, Mrs. Bryant, runs out of the store. One of the cousins says she’s going to get her gun. Emmett Till, stuttering, asks “W. . .w. . .w. . .what’s wrong?”—and the W makes a whistling noise. Mrs. Bryant, imagining that Emmett Till has whistled at her, turns and gives him a killing stare. A crowd, Black and white, gathers. Maurice yells at Emmett Till to run, and another cousin echoes him. Emmett Till sprints off.
The historical Emmett Till was lynched after interacting with 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Some witness accounts suggested that he whistled at her; other reporting suggested that he whistled due to a speech impediment. In Ghost Boys, Emmett Till’s speech-impediment-induced whistling is similar to Jerome’s toy gun: an innocent, childish behavior that’s misinterpreted as aggressive due to racist stereotypes about Black boys.
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Outside the flashback, Emmett Till tells Jerome that he pleaded with his cousins not to tell his great-uncle and -aunt what had happened because he didn’t want to be punished. He had no idea of the danger that was threatening him. When Jerome protests that Emmett Till did nothing bad, Emmett Till replies, “What mattered was what they—white people—thought I had done.”
Previously, people have repeatedly referred to Jerome as a “good boy.” Now Jerome tells Emmett Till he did nothing wrong. Yet the innocence and goodness of the boys don’t matter for two reasons. First, even if they had done the “bad” action they were misinterpreted as doing, they wouldn’t have deserved to die. Second, what determines the outcome of Jerome’s and Emmett Till’s lives isn’t what they did but what “white people” thought they did.
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Deep in the night, a pair of white men with guns break into Emmett Till’s great-uncle’s house. When his great-uncle tries to tell the men that Emmett Till is just a kid and not from the area, one man threatens to kill him. As Emmett Till screams for his mother and his family members beg, the men drag him into a truck. One of the men beats Emmett Till, saying, “Nobody disrespects my wife.”
Emmett Till’s great-uncle reminds the white men that Emmett Till is just a child, and Emmett Till screams for his mother when the men drag him away—both details emphasizing Emmett Till’s youth. Yet the white men choose to interpret his innocent behavior as dangerous, sexualized “disrespect[]” for Mrs. Bryant, showing how racism has warped their judgment and sense of reality.
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The men drive Emmett Till to the river, where they pull him from the truck. Mrs. Bryant’s husband hits Emmett, accusing him of whistling at Mrs. Bryant, and asks, “Who do you think you are?” Then he shoots Emmett Till. After Emmett Till dies, the men tie his body to a wheel with barbed wire and dump him in the river. Jerome, watching, notices Emmett Till’s hat abandoned on the bank.
Before shooting Emmett Till, Mr. Bryant asks, “Who do you think you are?” The question implies that, in killing Emmett Till, Mr. Bryant is trying to degrade him and turn him into “no one.” By bearing witness to Emmett Till’s murder, on the other hand, Jerome implicitly asserts that Emmett Till is a human being worthy of attention and understanding.
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With the story finished, Jerome tells Emmett Till how sorry he is. Emmett Till replies that all ghost boys feel that way about one another; all of them died because someone thought they were “a threat, a danger.” Jerome, recognizing that he’s a member of the ghost boys’ family now, has an impulse to give voice to his feeling of injustice: he begins crying out loudly and wordlessly. Emmett Till and the other ghost boys join him, lamenting their unjust murders and short lives.
Emmett Till claims that all the ghost boys were murdered because someone perceived them as a “threat.” This claim implies that anti-Black racism is based on an irrational fear that people of races different than one’s own are dangerous. When Jerome cries out, he is bearing witness to his own and the other boys’ murders. This emphasizes that he no longer sees his killing as a personal event but as a historical one that makes him part of a community of victims.
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Afterward, Jerome speculates that maybe a person is singing the hymn “Amazing Grace” someplace in the world. He wonders about whether Kim, Grandma, Ma, Pop, and the parents of the other ghost boys are peaceful. He wonders whether Emmett Till’s mother is still living and whether she ever found peace. Suddenly, Emmett instructs Jerome to “bear witness.” When Jerome asks what that means, Emmett explains that they show one another care, respect, and genuine connection by listening to each other’s stories, because “everyone needs their story heard.” Jerome, standing in the street until daylight comes, feels that he’s come to a new awareness.
“Amazing Grace” expresses belief in the possibility of moral progress. Because it plays at Jerome’s funeral earlier in the novel, the meaning of the allusion here is ambiguous: when Jerome speculates that “Amazing Grace” is playing somewhere, he may be wondering whether someone is making moral progress—or whether another Black boy’s funeral has just occurred. Emmett Till’s command that Jerome “bear witness” because “everyone’s story deserves to be heard” implies that telling and hearing stories is an important part of moral development and progress: unless people understand one another, they won’t stop hurting each other.
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School’s Out. As the seasons pass, Jerome keeps warning Black children who can’t hear him to stay “safe.” He roams his neighborhood and, noticing again how unsafe it is, is surprised anyone can be happy there—but he feels as though some change is coming, something that he is going to make happen. Reminiscing about Carlos, he recognizes that Carlos wanted to make him happy—and briefly succeeded. He liked having a friend, and he wonders whether he’d do it all again, knowing that it would end in his death.
When Jerome warns Black children who can’t hear him to stay “safe,” it represents his terrible newfound knowledge about the potentially fatal danger that racism poses to Black children. Yet after bearing witness to his own and other Black boys’ killings, he believes that he is going to make a change somehow—a belief that testifies to the power of “bearing witness.”
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Carlos. Jerome hasn’t seen Carlos since the day Kim told Carlos he needed to tell Grandma. He concentrates on Carlos and teleports to an apartment bedroom, where Carlos is lying on the bed. Jerome notices a newspaper photo of himself, a rosary, a drawing of him and Carlos playing percussion in the bathroom stalls, and a few other mementos, together with some candles, on Carlos’s bureau. He realizes that it’s a “memory altar,” somewhat like the one Grandma has set up to Grandpa Leni. Grandma talks to Grandpa Leni at the altar every week, even though Ma tells Grandma it makes her look crazy. Jerome hopes that Carlos talks to him too.
The “memory altar” includes both personal mementos and religious objects. For example, a rosary is a string of beads with an attached crucifix; the beads and the crucifix are physical reminders of particular prayers, and it is not uncommon in Catholicism to say rosary prayers for the dead. The memory altar physically represents Carlos’s grief over Jerome’s death, but the rosary beads may also hint that Carlos feels guilt and responsibility for Jerome’s soul—guilt foisted on him by racist violence.
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Jerome remembers that he touched Sarah’s book and wonders whether he could do that with Carlos’s papers—but he recalls that he was furious then, which he isn’t anymore. Looking at Carlos’s bare room—just two pieces of furniture and the altar—Jerome longs to give Carlos some gift, like toys or his own posters. Concentrating hard on his friendship with Carlos, Jerome manages to waft the photo of himself from the altar onto Carlos. Carlos picks it up, looks around for Jerome, and asks whether Jerome forgives him.
As soon as Jerome initiates contact with Carlos, Carlos asks whether Jerome forgives him, making clear that Carlos unfairly blames himself for Officer Moore’s violence against Jerome.
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A man walks into Carlos’s room and asks whether he’s okay. Carlos reassures the man, whom he calls “Papi,” that he’s fine. When Carlos’s father asks whether Carlos is upset about the boy in the photo, Carlos says “not anymore,” explains that the boy was his first Chicago friend Jerome, and bursts into violent tears. When Carlos’s father sits on the bed and hugs him, Carlos admits everything that happened with the toy gun. When Carlos’s father looks infuriated, Carlos apologizes—but then Carlos’s father says that Carlos “shouldn’t have to go to school scared.”
Carlos assumes that his father will be angry at him after he tells the truth about the toy gun. In fact, his father is only angry that Carlos “go[es] to school scared.” Carlos’s father’s reaction makes clear that while Carlos is taking on adult responsibility for Jerome’s death, his father correctly sees him as a child.
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Carlos’s father suggests that Carlos should have come to him with his fears. When Carlos admits that he was embarrassed, his father tells him that he shouldn’t have been: because everyone feels fear, what’s important is how you deal with it. Then he says: “It could’ve been you.” Frightened by this realization, Carlos grabs his father’s hand. Jerome lays his ghost-hand on top of theirs, though they can’t feel it.
Officer Moore killed Jerome because he acted hastily and violently on an irrational fear. In this scene, Carlos’s father’s advice suggests that fear itself isn’t the problem: fear is a natural and universal experience. Rather, what’s important is how fear makes a person act: that is, can someone step back, judge whether their fears are rational, and take proportionate action? Carlos’s father’s comment, “It could’ve been you,” suggests that racist fears put Mexican American children like Carlos as well as Black children like Jerome in danger.
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Carlos says that he has to admit what happened to Jerome’s family. Carlos’s father asks whether Carlos wants accompaniment. Jerome sees that Carlos wants to say yes, but Carlos resolves to do it alone. Carlos’s father tries to reassure him that Jerome would have understood—and his family will understand—that Carlos never intended what happened. When Carlos asks whether that’s true, Jerome says that it is. Carlos tells his father that he wants to honor Carlos on the Day of the Dead—and then addresses Jerome directly, repeating that he wants to honor him. Jerome, wondering whether Carlos can sense him, nods. Carlos’s father agrees to the plan and says that he knows Carlos “tried being good to” Jerome. Jerome silently agrees.
Jerome bore witness to himself, Emmett Till, and the other murdered Black boys by listening to Emmett Till’s story and crying out at the injustice of their deaths. Now, Carlos is trying to bear witness to Jerome by remembering him on the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday to celebrate the lives of dead loved ones. Carlos’s desire to bear witness to Jerome implies that, like Sarah, he has been changed by Jerome’s life and death. When Carlos’s father affirms that Carlos was “good to” Jerome, he highlights Carlos’s good intentions and innocence.
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Carlos & Grandma. Kim spots Carlos approaching through one of the apartment’s windows and runs outside to meet him. When he tells her that he’s going to do it, she offers to help—and when he demurs, she tells him it’s what Jerome would have wanted. Surprised, he thanks her. They walk through the living room, where Carlos seems happy to spot a drawing he made of Jerome on Grandma’s memory altar. Jerome, following them, realizes that he no longer belongs to the living world, which seems cramped to him.
That the living world and his old apartment in particular seem “cramped” to Jerome symbolizes how much poverty narrowed his worldview while he was alive, a point the novel emphasizes frequently when describing his under-resourced school district. It also seems like Jerome feels “cramped” because he’s perhaps ready to move on to the afterlife, suggesting he’s found peace at last.
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When Carlos and Kim find Grandma in the kitchen, she insists—over Carlos’s objections—that he take a cookie. Judging from Carlos’s expression, he can’t enjoy the food. Grandma says that she wishes Jerome had invited Carlos over, because she was worried he didn’t have friends, and asks whether Carlos was Jerome’s “good friend.” Carlos says he was—and then he blurts that he gave Jerome the toy gun, because he wanted to be “nice” to Jerome the way Jerome had been to him. Carlos and Kim start sobbing. Grandma hugs them. Jerome looks out the window, where he knows the ghost boys are, and back at Carlos, Kim, and Grandma, his “living family.”
Carlos shared his toy gun with Jerome because he wanted to be “nice” and a “good friend.” This explanation makes clear how childish and innocent Carlos’s motives were and thus how horrible it is that Jerome was killed due to Carlos’s actions, even as Carlos is not to blame for the killing. Jerome’s description of Kim, Grandma, and Carlos as his “living family” indicates that he now sees the other ghost boys as his “dead family.” It also indicates that he now sees Carlos as a brother, due to Carlos’s attempts to take care of Jerome’s family.
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Grandma says that she regrets not keeping Jerome inside the day he was shot, but she suspected he was doing something “a bit naughty” and she wanted him to enjoy himself a little, because he was so intent on behaving himself most of the time. When Kim says Jerome never got to have “much fun,” Grandma guesses that Kim knew about the toy gun. When Kim looks ashamed, Carlos jumps in to say that she tried to stop him from giving it to Jerome. Grandma comforts Kim, telling her she’s loved and saying, “Can’t undo wrong. Can only do our best to make things right.”
Jerome died in part because his Grandma wanted to let him be “naughty” occasionally and his little sister didn’t want to tell on him when he was having “fun.” In other words, Jerome died because Grandma and Kim wanted to let him act like a child for once—a fact that highlights how violent racism denies Black kids their childhood (and which the toy gun symbolizes). When Grandma says that in the aftermath of “wrong,” people can only do their “best to make things right,” she suggests that while it’s important to bear witness to past evils, it’s important primarily so that people can make progress.
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Grandma asks Carlos to share “three good things.” Kim, laughing and crying, explains that Grandma thinks the number three is lucky. Jerome notices that Carlos is standing in for him in a lucky trio: Grandma, Kim, and Carlos. Carlos asks for a second cookie. While he, Grandma, and Kim eat, he apologizes for not admitting he gave Jerome the gun sooner because he was ashamed. He credits Kim’s faith in him for making him courageous enough to admit it eventually. Jerome, witnessing Carlos, Kim, and Grandma, believes that the three of them will help Ma and Pop through their grief. This belief comforts him. He now thinks he has only one task left.
The morning of the day Jerome was shot, Grandma asked him to list “three good things.” Now she’s asking the same question of Carlos, illustrating that Carlos has become a kind of second grandson in the aftermath of Jerome’s death. Carlos’s admission that he was too ashamed to tell Grandma about the gun represents one way that racism impacts children of color: it makes them feel guilty for the racist attitudes and actions of white adults like Officer Moore.
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Silence. Sarah has stopped talking to Officer Moore and has removed all the pink items in her room—developments that worry Jerome. She’s on the computer all the time. Jerome has noticed that while her neighborhood is well-maintained, no one spends time outside; if his family lived there, they’d be outside all the time. One night, Jerome orders Sarah to get off her computer and do something else. She explains that she’s creating a website called “End Racism, Injustice” and starts quoting him statistics about murders of unarmed Black people and racial disparities in police-involved shootings.
Sarah is trying to bear witness to Jerome’s killing by shunning Officer Moore and creating a website to educate the public about other such killings. Previous moments in the novel have affirmed that bearing witness to victims of racist violence is important. Yet Jerome’s concern about Sarah’s isolation suggests that she may not be bearing witness to him in the healthiest or most productive way.
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Jerome, looking at Sarah’s computer. He recognizes that she’s put a lot of effort into the website but wonders whether it’ll make any difference. When she starts talking about the links on her page about him, he asks her to stop. She retorts that she’s helping him. Jerome—thinking of Officer Moore drinking downstairs, and Sarah’s mom, who has started sleeping throughout the day—tells her that she can’t help him: he’s dead. Sarah, miserably, insists that people have to learn what happened to Jerome so that no more children are murdered.
Jerome and Sarah have repeatedly wondered whether their ability to communicate means that Sarah is meant to help Jerome—or vice versa. Now Jerome states definitively that he is beyond Sarah’s help because he’s dead. When Sarah says that she wants to prevent anything like Jerome’s death from happening again, it suggests that Jerome has helped Sarah by educating her, spurring her moral progress, and inspiring her to help others in turn. Yet Jerome’s thoughts of Sarah’s parents, who are clearly struggling, imply that Jerome thinks Sarah should be trying to help her parents too.
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Jerome notices how “fierce” learning about violence against children has made Sarah, yet he’s troubled that the Moore family, his own family, and the entire rest of world seem so sad. He suggests that Sarah talk to Officer Moore. Sarah insists that she hates him and asks whether Jerome does too. Jerome thinks about it. After a moment of reflection, in which he remembers that Ma, Pop, and Grandma have told him hatred is wrong, he replies that he doesn’t hate Officer Moore and thinks Sarah shouldn’t either. When Sarah retorts that her father is a racist who murdered Jerome, Jerome replies that he’s a person who made a terrible mistake.
When Jerome first visited Sarah, Sarah tried to convince him that Officer Moore had made a mistake, while Jerome insisted that Officer Moore purposefully killed him. Now Sarah is the one insisting that her father is a racist killer, while Jerome is referring to Officer Moore killing him as a mistake. Since Jerome at this point has borne witness to the injustice of his own death, his understanding attitude toward Officer Moore doesn’t mean that he thinks his death wasn’t wrong or motivated by racism. Rather, it suggests that Jerome now thinks that reaching out to and educating people like Officer Moore is preferable to ostracizing them.
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In his mind, Jerome compares the terrible mistake that Officer Moore made to the terrible bullying that Eddie, Mike, and Snap inflicted on him and Carlos on a whim. He tells Sarah that while random bullying is bad, targeted bullying motivated by bigotry is worse. Then he asks who “taught” Officer Moore his bigotry, given that Sarah isn’t bigoted herself. When Sarah suggests that her father is just a bully, Jerome tells her the issue is more complex than that. He thinks that, after all, police officers carry firearms whereas Eddie, Mike, and Snap just insult and beat up their victims.
When Jerome asks who “taught” Officer Moore to be bigoted, he implies that bigotry, including racism, is consciously or subconsciously learned rather than an innate reaction. By extension, he seems to be implying that people can unlearn bigotry through education and experience—and that it’s especially important for police officers to receive this education because they carry deadly weapons.
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Sarah, looking at her computer, says that there are “so many stories.” Jerome looks at the names of other murdered Black boys on Sarah’s screen and thinks that people may remember him. He again suggests that Sarah should talk to Officer Moore: “Something inside him isn’t right.” When Sarah agrees with Jerome’s insight, saying her father is fearful, Jerome asks whether she can help him stop fearing Black boys. Sarah starts crying. Jerome says goodbye and vanishes, having honed his skill at ghost travel.
When Jerome looks at Sarah’s website and thinks that people may remember him, it suggests that Sarah is doing something important in memorializing victims of racist violence, even if her efforts are imperfect. His claim that Officer Moore “isn’t right” and his suggestion that Sarah help him stop fearing Black boys suggests both that racism “isn’t right” and that it’s possible for people like Sarah to help educated others who hold racist views.
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Popping back up in Sarah’s room, Jerome tells her that her attempts to bear witness for him do matter. Tentatively, Sarah ventures that maybe if people are better educated about one another, everyone will be less fearful. Jerome asks whether she means like how she isn’t “even scared of ghosts,” and Sarah laughs. When he asks whether she plans to tell everyone his story, she says she’ll tell the stories of “anyone else hurt out of fear” too. Jerome suggests that police officers must be afraid a lot, and Sarah counters that they shouldn’t be differentially afraid of Black people.
Sarah suggests that education—learning about people different from oneself—may be a solution to irrational and racist fear and thus to fear-based racist violence. When Jerome jokes about Sarah not “even [being] scared of ghosts,” he is suggesting that Sarah may be unusually open and brave. When he tries to extend some empathy to police officers by suggesting that fear must be a major component of their jobs, Sarah distinguishes between the rational fear police officers have in dangerous situations and the irrational fear some police officers have of Black people.
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Sarah nervously admits to Jerome that in a way, she’s happy Officer Moore won’t be tried for murder, because she loves him and knows his actions were a mistake—but then, pleadingly, she asks why he and his partner didn’t even try to give Jerome medical aid. Jerome says that he doesn’t know, but a moment later, he asks Sarah to list three positive characteristics of her father’s. Sarah lists how much her father loves her and her mother, how he takes her skating (not realizing she loathes skating), and how much he loves being a police officer. Talking about how he saved lives and earned medals for courage, Sarah crumbles emotionally, wondering aloud how he could make such a terrible mistake.
At various points, both Jerome and Sarah have tried to understand and empathize with Officer Moore’s irrational, violent fear—but neither can understand why he didn’t give Jerome first aid while Jerome was dying. This implies either that Officer Moore was paralyzed by shock when he realized Jerome was a child or that some of his actions are just beyond the children’s understanding. Sarah’s revelation that Officer Moore has been decorated for bravery emphasizes both that even otherwise “good” police officers can commit acts of racist violence and that even apparently brave people can be subject to racist fears.
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Jerome tells Sarah again that she should talk to Officer Moore. She admits she’s afraid. Jerome tells her that everyone is—though he realizes that he isn’t afraid now that he’s dead. He reflects that he and Emmett Till were “good kids,” but while their killers lived their lives badly, he barely got to live his life at all. He remembers how Emmett Till said that his killers never repented of murdering him and were acquitted by a jury composed entirely of white people. Jerome notes that Officer Moore at least isn’t “celebrating” dodging charges and wonders whether that’s “progress.”
Jerome wonders whether it counts as “progress” that Officer Moore feels guilty for killing him in a way that Emmett Till’s murderers never did. In a sense, it is progress—but it clearly isn’t enough progress, since being “good kids” wasn’t enough to protect Jerome or Emmett Till. The fact that 12-year-old Jerome is killed in a racially motivated fashion more than 60 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till’s lynching emphasizes that the U.S. still has a long way to go in protecting Black kids.
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Jerome imagines Sarah growing up to be a writer, protestor, teacher, and mother who raises her children to be unprejudiced. He encourages her to teach people how to “really see” others’ humanity so that no more children die senselessly. He reflects that Sarah will grow up well, because she’s an individual who’s a white girl rather than the stereotype “white girl,” just as he and the other murdered Black boys whose stories Sarah shares on her website were individual human beings.
Sarah’s ability to see Jerome’s ghost symbolizes her ability to see and bear witness to his humanity despite their different backgrounds. Now, Jerome wants her to educate other people in seeing everyone’s humanity. Further, Jerome himself has made similar progress, as he sees her as a friend and not just another faceless “white girl.”
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Jerome wonders whether white people are afraid of Black people due to slavery and wishes he could announce to the world that racially stereotyping Black boys doesn’t help anything. He and Sarah say goodbye to each other. Jerome contemplates how surprising it is that he made a new friend after he died, while Sarah promises never to forget him or let anyone else forget him.
Previously, the novel suggested that racism derives from fear of difference. Now Jerome speculates that white people in the U.S. are afraid of Black people due to slavery—which suggests that, in the U.S. context, anti-Black racism may stem from white people fearing feeling guilty or responsible. Sarah’s promise to never let anyone forget Jerome makes clear that she has taken “bearing witness” to him and other victims of racist violence as her life’s purpose.
Themes
Jerome, outside Sarah’s house, hears Sarah call to Officer Moore. She runs downstairs and finds him looking discombobulated and miserable on the sofa. He offers her a hug, and she embraces him. He kisses her hair three times. Then Sarah pulls back and asks her father to be her collaborator. Going pale, he asks whether she’s talking about her work on “the young man I killed.” She explains that her project is about all deaths due to “mistakes” and “prejudice.” Officer Moore, struggling with his emotions, eventually hugs her again and agrees. Sarah tells him she loves him. Jerome feels that he’s received what he “needed” from Sarah and Officer Moore.
Officer Moore is still referring to 12-year-old Jerome as a “young man” rather than a child, which suggests that Officer Moore isn’t fully ready to accept the full horror of his own actions. Yet he is willing to help Sarah bear witness to his victim and educate others about racist “mistakes,” which suggests he is capable of making further moral progress. When Jerome feels that he has received what he “needed” from Officer Moore as well as Sarah, it suggests that he just wanted Officer Moore to admit wrongdoing and see him as a human being all along.
Themes
On November 1—which Grandma celebrates as All Saints’ Day and Carlos’s family celebrates as the Day of the Dead—Jerome’s and Carlos’s families have a picnic on Jerome’s grave. Grandma, Carlos, and Kim ornament Jerome’s gravestone and talk to his spirit (Kim mentions that Sarah gave her a Little Women as a gift and that Kim has decided to imagine all the sisters as Black). Meanwhile, Carlos’s parents interact compassionately with Ma and Pop. When Carlos puts a basketball on Jerome’s grave and tells him to play with his friends, Jerome thinks that maybe he’ll organize a “ghost boy tournament.”
All Saints’ Day, which occurs on November 1, is a Christian feast day held in honor of Christian saints and martyrs. Carlos had already expressed an intention to celebrate Jerome on the Day of the Dead; by mentioning All Saints’ Day as well, the novel suggests that Jerome is a kind of child “martyr” to racist violence whose death may inspire social progress. Meanwhile, Kim’s discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868—1869) pokes fun at the overwhelming whiteness of classic American children’s literature.
Themes
Grandma, gesturing with a piece of paper, tells Carlos it’s very meaningful to her. Jerome looks at the paper and sees a drawing of himself as a skeleton. Carlos explains that pictures like that are a Mexican tradition honoring the dead. Kim asks whether Carlos will teach her to draw, and he agrees. Grandma announces that she’d like to give Jerome’s video games to Carlos and suggests that maybe Jerome can watch while Carlos plays. Carlos enthusiastically agrees to that too. Their closeness makes Jerome happy.
Carlos explains that his art is a way of honoring the dead by representing them. With this detail, Ghost Boys may be implying that it, too, is a piece of art intended to honor and bear witness to the dead boys it represents—not only the fictional Jerome, but real-life boys like Emmett Till, Tamir Rice, and other murdered Black boys.
Themes
Emmett Till, popping into existence beside Jerome, says that Jerome and all the ghost boys are remembered. When Jerome asks whether the murders will ever stop, Emmett Till says he’s “got to believe” that someday they will. Jerome, noticing how aged and exhausted Emmett Till looks, worries that grief will age him too. He realizes that the ghost boys haven’t moved on because they’re still “trying to change the world.” When he asks Emmett Till whether all the ghost boys have some person who sees them, Emmett nods and says, “Only the living can make change.” He says that the lawyer at his trial, Thurgood Marshall, was the person who saw him, and that Thurgood Marshall became a major civil rights activist and a judge.
Emmett’s statement that he’s “got to believe” the murders will stop indicates that social progress is not inevitable: it will only happen if people take action to make change. Finally, Jerome sees his purpose in haunting the living world: he is “trying to change the world” by inspiring living people, who are the “only” ones who can directly “make change.” Thurgood Marshall (1908—1993) argued many civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the case that mandated the racial desegregation of schools, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In 1967 he became the first Black U.S. Supreme Court judge.
Themes
Jerome tells Emmett Till that Sarah will “do good”; internally, he adds that Carlos and Kim will also do good. Emmett tells Jerome that they have to leave. When Jerome asks where they’re going, Emmett says they roam the world helping the dead speak until the racist murders end and understanding reigns. Jerome adds to this speech a wish for peace.
Jerome realizes that in bearing witness to his life and death, Sarah, Carlos, and Kim are becoming forces for “good” in the world. Though previously Jerome has wanted to move on to the afterlife, his character arc ends with the decision to stay haunting the living world until social justice has been achieved. This shows that he has moved from a personal understanding of what happened to him to understanding that his death is symptomatic of violent racism against Black boys.
Themes
