The Last Best Ghost Boy

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• The Last Best Ghost Boy
• Jami Nakamura Lin (bio)

1

We had the bad luck to come of age at the beginning of the end. Our senior year coincided with the season of tempests and pestilence. And although some of our surviving peers later made their livelihoods writing glib op-eds with names like "The Year that Fuck Around Turned into Find Out," all we were concerned with that year was the ghost boys.

In late autumn, our girls' school held a special assembly to discuss the third girl in our class to get pregnant. She'd been among us, and then she was gone: whisked out of our school, out of her home, as if she—like the other two—had never existed.

It just kills me to look at you girls, with your hearts full of love, our headmaster said, dabbing at his forehead with a paper towel. He was a timid man, with milky white hair and milky white skin, and his hands always trembled when he stood before our pews. [End Page 406]

And then to have to look at those boys, the Thomases and Zacchaeuses of the world, with their hearts full of—of—

He stopped, as if his innocent mouth were unable to even form the word.

In any case, he said, I've taken a special step. I've ordered one hundred ghost boys to be delivered to our school. The boat from the other side will arrive tomorrow.

We gaped. Not only because our school had, under the auspices of the church, always taken a hard line against any sort of spectral communion but also because no one had ever heard of such a quantity before. The swankiest Halloween parties usually only wanted two or three ghosts for atmosphere. Even the best downtown haunted hotels only shelled out for a half-dozen or so.

Yes, the headmaster said, pleased at our reaction. The company had to go through quite a lot of effort for us, gathering boys from all over the plane. But, he said, his eyes roaming the pews, we thought the expense worth it. To protect you girls.

The ghost boys, he explained, would provide companionship for us. They would be our friends, our study-mates. Perhaps they would—though the company could not guarantee this—develop a stronger connection. These ghost boys were perfect gentlemen. They were not like the hoodlums from the boys' school, with whom we could no longer share lunch or dances or after-school activities. We would not end up like those first three girls.

Something the administration was offering to us on a silver platter—it had to be a trick.

And yet even tricks glint in the sun. A trick flame can, in a pinch, warm you at night.

We peppered the headmaster. Could the ghost boys stay in our homes, or was that a sin? Could they stay in our beds, or was that a sin? Could we sit next to them, side by side, with a pillow in between? Without a pillow? [End Page 407]

The headmaster pressed his sweaty hands against his khakis as he stumbled through the answers. He seemed to be suppressing a feeling at the back of his mind. His scheme, we would learn, had received pushback from the board. Three girls is a crisis, the headmaster had said. It's nigh on the End Times, he said—all anyone had to do was read the news or look out the window. Different rules for different eras. In the end, he'd had to shout Augustine at them: that God would never permit anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil!

That night the headmaster read through the Book of Revelation again. He imagined the Four Horsemen coming down Main Street, passing by the train station and the boba shop. His school, at least, would be ready: his girls as pure and white as the driven snow.

That night, at our own homes, we couldn't sleep, imagining the ghost boys. We hadn't asked the headmaster our real questions: Could they love...