Jin-Ting was eight years old. She threw up whole spaghetti hoops complete with tomato sauce in the classroom during quiet time and from then on everyone said she was a ghost. Hugo asked why the spaghetti hoops were whole. Didn’t she chew them? Jin-Ting said that she had. Hugo said she must be a ghost then because her teeth didn’t work. Maisy said no one could eat that many spaghetti hoops, there were so many, look at them. There were ten billion spaghetti hoops, said Maisy.
Miss Springer explained to 3B that Jin-Ting was not a ghost, she just had a bad tummy. If Jin-Ting isn’t a ghost though, said Jamie, then why is she that colour? Miss Springer got really angry and said Chinese people aren’t ghosts and that Jamie was being extremely rude and everybody laughed like when Jin-Ting slipped in her hoops and they stuck on her grey skirt like tiny portholes.
After that day everyone paid much more attention to Jin-Ting. All the children tried hard to notice more ways she was different. Jin-Ting’s lips always seemed to be dry, someone noticed, like dead skin from a snake, all cracked, hard and horrible. Jing-Ting’s eyes were red and wet all the time and she would sit with her mouth a bit open and the spit bubbles in her crackly snake lips got bigger and smaller and bigger and smaller. The sleeves of her purple pullover were veiny with dried snot from wiping her flaky red nose. Chantal leaned over and whispered stop crying snake ghost.
No one noticed how nice Jin-Ting’s hair was, completely black and straight and perfectly trimmed at the neckline into a lovely black bob like a helmet. Nobody envied her handwriting any more – like that time Chantal said Jin-Ting’s writing was really cool like a computer had done it – and nobody asked why she was sad when she used to be happy. Ghosts are just sad.
Miss Springer went to get more gold stars from the stock room one day and told 3B to sit quietly. First it was just Chantal, really quietly. Then Bhavesh and Daniella joined in. Hugo laughed and started doing it too and soon everyone was chanting, the whole class shouting louder and louder until it was like a football match: SNAKE GHOST! SNAKE GHOST! SNAKE GHOST! Chris was doing EUGGGGGGGGH noises as well, over and over until Jin-Ting thought she would be properly sick again. Miss Springer came back and everyone stopped and giggled and Miss Springer didn’t understand so she started giggling too. Jin-Ting asked if she could go to the nurse’s office and Miss Springer said hurry up then. The nurse gave her a square blue plastic tub that smelt of sick so Jin-Ting was sick in it. It was a normal sick and Jin-Ting asked if she could keep it to show everyone but the nurse gave her a weird look and called Jin-Ting’s parents who called Miss Springer.
Chantal and Hugo and Chris said they were sorry when Miss Springer told them off and phoned their parents but they were pretending.
In the playground Jin-Ting sat on the bench with no one else and the Hello Kitty bento lunchbox her big sister had bought her for Christmas. Bye-Bye Kitty, said Hugo, and hit her lunchbox so it went on the floor and the food fell out. Uuuuuurgh, ghost food! said Chantal and stamped on the lunchbox to break it. Yeah, ghosts don’t need food cos they’re dead, said Hugo. Jin-Ting started to cry but didn’t move or say anything either, just looked at all the children crowding around her like why are you doing this? I’m nice and we used to be friends sort of. Chris had something in his pocket.
A snake ghost needs a special kind of food, said Chris. A snake eats a mouse, so a ghost snake eats…
GHOST MOUSE!!!!!!
And he threw the dead mouse that was in his pocket at Jin-Ting and it hit her face where it touched her mouth and she tasted how it was furry and rotten and it fell in her lap and everyone laughed. Jin-Ting stopped crying and looked in her lap at the mouse whose dead mouse-eyes looked back up at her panicking about it’s crushed tummy where the trap had trapped it and pushed its guts out of its bum like backwards puke and now the guts were touching her dress where the hoops had stuck on it. And her eyes grew wide and her mouth grew even wider than that but she didn’t scream just kept breathing quicker and faster and quicker and faster –
Hugo was filming her with his iPhone. Everyone was going SNAKE GHOST SNAKE GHOST and laughing. Someone from a different class in a different year who Jin-Ting had never met or spoken to squeezed all his Capri-Sun into his mouth and pretended to sick it on the floor and everyone laughed at that as well.
– and then Jin-Ting remembered how to scream. She screamed so loud that everyone stopped shouting and laughing. She grabbed a fistful of her own beautiful hair and pulled it so hard that a big clump ripped out along with some of the skin from her head, and underneath the skin was fatty and lumpy and red like wet Play-Doh. When Mr Balakrishnan came running he found all the boys and girls standing silently around a screaming Jin-Ting who had a mangled mouse in her lap and a big chunk of hair in her hand and a lot of blood on her face.
***
Jin-Ting didn’t come back to school after that. Hugo, Chris and Chantal’s parents were called in and the headmaster said what the children had done. The girl must have done something to deserve it because Hugo is a good boy, said Hugo’s mum. Come on they are just kids, said Chantal’s dad. Chris’ mum and dad looked really angry though.
One day after a few weeks when everyone had forgotten all about Jin-Ting, Miss Springer came and said I have some very sad news which is that Jin-Ting has died. But she didn’t say how it happened.
Chantal started to cry. She felt really really bad and in that exact second without realising it decided to never be mean to another person on purpose for the rest of her whole life. She thought about Jin-Ting basically every day forever and in her head was always saying sorry to her and feeling especially bad because they had actually been sort of friends once and Chantal had even been over to her house to play.
Chris didn’t cry and looked right at one particular green tile on the wall for the whole day without actually looking at the tile. He stopped speaking for a long time and eventually didn’t come to school because his parents took him to a kind of doctor. Even when he was a really old man, like 30, he still saw Jin-Ting when he closed his eyes sometimes or when he slept, with her face breathing in and out and the smear of mouse blood next to her lip and her big green eyes wide with terror and pleading with him. He never became a happy man and did a lot of things to forget Jin-Ting but they swam inside him like poison and he died before getting really old like a dad or a granddad.
Hugo was just drawing a picture of a dog with a knife in it when Miss Springer said Jin-Ting was dead and he didn’t really stop drawing or pay attention when she said it. His whole life he never thought about Jin-Ting much except maybe if he was a bit sad then he would think about hoops coming out of her or guts coming out of the mouse and wonder how Jin-Ting really died, having a little chuckle to himself and saying silly old snake ghost.