Ghost Boys opens with a police officer standing over the dead body of 12-year-old Jerome Rogers and repeating saying, “It’s a kid.” Later, the Chicago Tribune publishes an article in which the police officer claims he had to shoot because Jerome had a gun. The novel then alternates between scenes on the day of the shooting and in the months after the shooting. The latter timeline follows Jerome’s ghost as he haunts his family and attends the hearings that will determine whether Officer Moore, the white officer who shot and killed him, will face charges.
On the morning of December 8, Jerome’s Ma repeatedly instructs him to come directly home after school, while his Grandma tells him she had frightening dreams about him. Jerome comforts her. Then he walks his little sister Kim to school through their impoverished neighborhood. At school, Jerome’s bullies Eddie, Mike, and Snap make threatening gestures. In class a bit later, Jerome’s well-meaning but obtuse teacher Mr. Myers introduces a new student, Carlos, at the front of the class—singling Carlos out in a way that’s likely to get him beaten up. Mr. Myers tells everyone that Carlos is bilingual, and Jerome, pitying the other boy, blurts out, “Hola.” When Carlos sits next to Jerome, Eddie makes a threatening gesture at them.
At lunch, Jerome shows Carlos how to hide in a bathroom stall while eating so bullies can’t see him. While Jerome and Carlos eat in adjoining stalls, Carlos suggests that they become friends. Jerome hesitates—becoming friends would commit him to defending Carlos from bullies—but he ultimately agrees. Eddie, Mike, and Snap burst in and drag Carlos from his hiding place. When Carlos dares to defend himself, they knock him down and begin kicking him in the gut and head. Jerome, terrified, yells that he’ll tell. The bullies threaten Jerome until Carlos pulls out a gun. This terrifies the bullies, and they leave the bathroom. After the bullies leave, Jerome tries to flee too—until Carlos tells him that the gun is just a plastic toy. The boys laugh hysterically.
After school lets out, Carlos offers to lend Jerome the toy gun while Jerome is waiting outside for his little sister Kim. Kim arrives, sees the toy gun, and tells Jerome that their parents wouldn’t want him to take it—but Jerome, wanting to misbehave and have fun for once, takes it. Jerome is playing with the gun outside when he’s shot with no warning and dies.
Following his death, Jerome haunts his family’s apartment. His Grandma mournfully compares Jerome to Emmett Till, a 14-year-old lynching victim murdered in 1955, while his Pop compares him to Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot to death while playing with a toy gun by a Cleveland police officer in 2014. In his apartment kitchen, Jerome encounters the ghost of another Black boy. The ghost leaves shortly after, but when Jerome follows his family to church for his own funeral, the ghost appears again and warns him not to attend the service—his funeral will only distress him.
On April 18, four months after Jerome’s death, a preliminary hearing begins to determine whether the white police officer who shot him, Officer Moore, will face charges. Officer Moore claims that he feared for his life because Jerome had a gun. Jerome is asking himself why Officer Moore would lie when he notices Officer Moore’s daughter (later revealed to be Sarah) pointing at him. Officer Moore says that Jerome was large, scary, and looked like an adult, and he repeats that he felt “threatened,” provoking outrage from Pop and other people in attendance. In the tumult, Sarah sneaks up on Jerome and tells him that she can see him.
Later, Jerome ghosts into Officer Moore’s house and finds Sarah in an extremely pink bedroom. She tells Jerome she recognized him from a photo and says she’s sorry. When she makes excuses for her father, she and Jerome have a disagreement about whether police officers are good. Then Sarah cries and asks how she can help Jerome. Officer Moore walks in and tells Sarah it’s bedtime. Sarah asks her father whether Jerome was really 12. Though Officer Moore makes excuses, Sarah persists, pointing out that she and Jerome were the same age and height. Officer Moore storms off. Sarah asks whether her father made a mistake. Jerome tells her that there was no mistake: Officer Moore acted intentionally. Sarah insists that it must have been a mistake and suggests that she and Jerome become friends—despite vocal hesitation from Jerome, who thinks that a white girl befriending him is ridiculous.
At the preliminary hearing on April 18, the prosecuting lawyer suggests that Officer Moore shot Jerome due to subconscious racial bias. Sarah, distressed, covers her ears—and Jerome sees the other ghost appear beside her. Later, visiting Sarah at her house, Jerome confirms his suspicion that she sees the other ghost too. Suddenly, the other ghost appears and walks Jerome to Sarah’s window. Thousands of ghosts of Black boys are outside. Sarah, horrified, asks whether they were killed like Jerome. The other ghost says yes and reveals that he’s Emmett Till. When Jerome asks whether he’s the Emmett Till whom his Grandma mentioned, Emmett says that he was murdered in the South in 1955. When Jerome asks how Emmett died, Emmett replies that Jerome isn’t ready to hear the whole story yet.
On a later visit to Sarah’s house, Jerome speculates to Sarah that Emmett was also murdered by a white man. Sarah mentions something about her parents not wanting her to “see” Jerome’s shooting—and realizes that there may be video footage. Though Jerome warns her that she might not want to watch it, Sarah finds and plays the video. She is horrified to discover that her father neither gave Jerome a verbal warning before shooting him nor provided him with any first aid afterward.
Jerome accompanies Sarah to school, where she skips class, hiding in the library because she can’t stand how other students are praising her father for being a “good cop.” When the librarian, Ms. Penny, approaches Sarah, Sarah asks for help researching Emmett Till. Ms. Penny argues that the Emmett Till case is too disturbing for a middle-schooler to research, but when Sarah persists, Ms. Penny agrees to show her a picture of Emmett Till’s body. Jerome leaves, but he hears Sarah crying inconsolably behind him.
On April 19, the second day of the hearing, Officer Moore repeats over and over that he was “in fear for [his] life”—and Jerome realizes that Officer Moore really was terrified of him, a skinny 12-year-old with a toy gun sprinting away from the police car. After a lunch break, the judge decides not to charge Officer Moore with any crime, citing the difficulties of policing and the “realistic-looking” toy gun Jerome was holding.
Carlos and Grandma have started walking Kim to school in Jerome’s place. After a while, Grandma lets Carlos walk Kim back without her supervision. Jerome, haunting them, notices how sad Carlos has become since Jerome’s shooting. One day, Eddie, Mike, and Snap are waiting for Carlos and Kim at school. Jerome is terrified that the bullies will target Kim—but when Carlos fiercely asserts that Kim is his family, Eddie (who is Dominican-American) shakes his hand and says, “Bueno. Con respeto.” Then he offers Kim condolences for her loss. After school that day, Carlos fashions makeshift drumsticks out of a tree branch and plays percussion on various objects, inspiring Kim to dance. Afterward, she tells him that he needs to inform Grandma of what happened.
Seeing more and more ghost boys like him, Jerome realizes that the events around his death aren’t just about him. He asks Emmett for the story of his death. Emmett explains how he was brutally murdered by two white men because he spoke to one man’s wife, a cashier, directly—and because she misinterpreted his speech impediment as a wolf-whistle—while he was visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. Jerome howls out his feelings of injustice and grief—and all the other ghost boys join in. Emmett orders Jerome to “bear witness,” listening respectfully to others’ stories.
Seasons pass. One day, Jerome is thinking about Carlos and teleports to Carlos’s bedroom, where he discovers that Carlos has set up a small memorial altar to him. Wanting to help the miserable-looking Carlos, Jerome—focusing hard—manages to move a photo of himself on the altar. Carlos, picking up the photo, asks whether Jerome forgives him. Then Carlos’s father comes in. Carlos confesses to his father what happened with the bullies and the toy gun. With his father’s emotional support, he resolves to tell the truth to Jerome’s Grandma too.
From the window, Kim spots Carlos approaching, runs to meet him, and leads him into her apartment kitchen, where Grandma is preparing food. When Grandma says she wishes Jerome had invited Carlos over and asks whether Carlos was a “good friend,” Carlos bursts into a confession about the toy gun. Carlos and Kim both start sobbing. Grandma embraces them. Jerome predicts that Carlos, Kim, and Grandma will take care of one another and of Ma and Pop. He decides his afterlife has just one remaining task.
Jerome visits Sarah, who has stopped speaking to her father and begun spending all her time on her laptop. She explains that she is creating a website to memorialize Jerome and other victims of racist violence. When Jerome suggests that she talk to her father, she claims to hate her father and asks whether Jerome hates him too. Jerome says no, thinking about how his own family taught him hate was evil. He suggests that Sarah teach her father how to overcome his racist fear of Black boys. When Sarah admits she’s afraid to talk to her father, Jerome tells her that everyone experiences fear. They say goodbye, and Sarah promises not to let anyone forget him. From outside Sarah’s house, Jerome watches Sarah run down to her father on the sofa, accept a hug from him, and ask him to help her with her website teaching the public about victims of racist violence. Office Moore, unsteadily, agrees.
On November 1, the Day of the Dead, Carlos’s family and Jerome’s have a picnic on Jerome’s grave. Jerome and Emmett, watching them, have a conversation about change. Emmett asserts that the dead can’t change the world—but living people who see the dead can, like the prosecutor who argued his murder case, Thurgood Marshall. Jerome thinks that Sarah, Kim, and Carlos are going to be change agents. At the novel’s end, he directly addresses readers, asking them to “bear witness” so that stories like his won’t need to be told anymore.
