Four Ghosts (ii) | short stories
(ii): The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark
He used to sit at the corner desk, second row from the window, where the sun hit hardest in the mornings. Always hunched over, sleeves pulled over his hands. He wore the same hoodie every day. Navy blue, with little holes near the cuffs from where he picked at the seams.
He was shy, but not quiet. There’s a difference. He only really spoke when someone asked him something first. And even then, his words came out fast, clumsy, too eager to leave his mouth before they were fully formed. He’d say things like, “Did you know Saturn could float in water?” or “The moon smells like gunpowder, I think.” Then he’d wince like he regretted saying anything at all.
People didn’t know what to do with that. So mostly, they ignored him. Until they didn’t.
Once, he pulled out a sheet of glow-in-the-dark dinosaur stickers and offered one to the girl next to him. She laughed. Not cruelly—just confused. He said, “I thought you might like stegosauruses.” She didn’t take it. He put the sheet away without a word.
But I remember the way his hand trembled when he tucked them back into his folder. I remember how he kept his head down for the rest of class.
The boys started on him that winter. When it got cold and people got meaner. It started with shoulder bumps in the hallway. Then came the gum in his locker. The pencil shavings dumped on his desk. Someone filled his backpack with ketchup packets. That one made him cry. Not loud, not messy. Just a few tears while he cleaned it out, one by one, as if he didn’t want to make a scene.
Sometimes, it was worse than just mess. Someone made a fake Instagram account using a picture of him from the yearbook. Gave it a dumb name—@spaceloser00 or something like that. Posted edits of him floating through galaxies with captions like “looking for friends. still lost.” They tagged the school in one. It spread fast. The account was gone in a day, but people quoted it for weeks.
Another time, someone stuck notes in his locker. Folded in triangles like middle school confessions.
No one would even notice if you left.
Aliens wouldn’t take you either.
Get out of here, weirdo.
I saw him find them once. He didn’t react. Just took them out, unfolded them slowly, one by one, and crumpled them in his fist.
He never told the teachers. Never told anyone, I think. He just kept showing up. Stickers. Dinosaurs. Stars.
I don’t know why they hated him so much. Maybe because he was soft. Maybe because he smiled with both rows of teeth. Maybe because he wore light-up shoes until freshman year and didn’t care that people laughed. Maybe because cruelty doesn’t need a reason. It just needs something to bite.
He used to draw planets on his worksheets. Little scribbles in the margins—Neptune with a cartoon smile, Saturn with eyelashes. I saw once that he’d written “Jupiter is just a scared star.” in the corner of a math quiz. He got a C+. The teacher circled it in red, but didn’t say anything.
One day, in the hallway, I passed him while the others were laughing—loud, fake, sharp laughter that didn’t match anything real. I didn’t stop. I didn’t look. But I felt his eyes on me as I walked past, and something made me glance back.
He smiled at me. Just barely. Just a crooked little thing, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to. And he said, “Hi.” That was it. Nothing else.
I didn’t say anything back. I don’t know why.
Maybe I was afraid the moment would mean something. Maybe I thought if I acknowledged him, I’d be pulled in too. But I remember the way his smile flickered when I didn’t respond. Like a porch light going out.
The last day wasn’t supposed to be anything special. It was warm. The hallways were louder than usual. People buzzing with pre-summer energy. The kind of day where no one wants to work, and everyone thinks they’re invincible.
I don’t know what the final straw was. Maybe it was the soda someone poured in his locker. Maybe it was the Instagram thing. Maybe it was the drawing of him someone taped to the whiteboard—a stick figure with crossed eyes and SPACE CADET written above it in fat red marker.
Or maybe it was the moment someone opened his locker and threw his backpack across the floor. Everything spilled out—books, pencils, that same sheet of dinosaur stickers, crumpled drawings of planets, and one photo. A photo of him as a little kid, holding a paper rocket and smiling like the world hadn’t closed in yet.
Someone stepped on it.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, staring. Then something cracked.
One moment, he was just standing still. The next, he was on his feet. Screaming. Not words—just noise. Raw, unfiltered noise like an animal trying to tear itself out of its own body.
He flipped a desk. Punched the whiteboard. Threw a chair at the door and missed. Someone tried to grab him. He hit back. Not well—but hard. Enough to make someone bleed. Enough to make someone afraid.
I remember the silence after. The stunned, choking kind. Someone was crying. Someone was filming. He stood there in the wreckage, chest heaving, hair sticking to his forehead like he’d been underwater.
And then he said, quietly, “I don’t want to be here anymore.” Like he just realized it. Like the sentence had been forming in his chest for years, and now it had nowhere else to go.
They pulled him out. Cops. Counselors. Whispering adults. He didn’t come back the next day. Or the one after. Or ever again.
They said he was expelled. That he was in some facility now. Getting help. Whatever that means.
Weeks later, I found one of his dinosaur stickers stuck under my desk. A little glow-in-the-dark brontosaurus, smiling with cartoon teeth. I peeled it off and put it in my wallet.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because it felt like a piece of him hadn’t left yet. Like something small and glowing had been tucked into the wreckage and forgotten. Like maybe he left it for someone to find. Or maybe it just slipped out when no one was looking.
I thought about throwing it away. Told myself it didn’t mean anything. But I couldn’t do it. Because the truth is—I still see him sometimes. In shy boys with messy hair and wide smiles. In scuffed sneakers. In kids who talk too fast and get talked over.
And some nights, when I can’t sleep, I take it out. And I wonder if he ever made it to space.