Four years.
It felt like a lifetime. It felt like a blink. It felt like an endless, chaotic montage of existential terror, stolen grant money, rogue Tesla coils, philosophical roast wars, and a truly alarming amount of questionable cafeteria "protein."
And now, it was over.
Crestwood University's graduation ceremony was in full, pompous swing on the sun-drenched quad. Rows of black-robed students sat like a field of anxious crows, sweating under the polyester. Proud parents sniffled into tissues. The chancellor droned on about "the horizon of possibility" and "the leaders of tomorrow," a speech that had apparently been written in 1973 and never updated.
Among the graduates, sitting in a clump, were the Survivors Club. Ethan, Mason, Liam, Chloe, and Jade. They had made it. Against all odds, spectral interventions, and their own spectacularly bad decisions, they were getting degrees.
Their caps were decorated not with inspirational quotes, but with inside jokes. Ethan's had a tiny, glitching computer sprite. Mason's read "I SURVIVED ALEXANDER PLATH" in glitter. Liam's simply said "THE LEMON WAS RIGHT." Chloe's featured a perfectly drawn, steaming cup of iced coffee. Jade's was tastefully adorned with a single, elegant fern.
They were vibrating with a giddy, disbelieving joy. They'd done it.
They were also, secretly, devastated.
Because this was an ending. The great, sprawling, messy, wonderful experiment of the last four years was over. They were moving on. Ethan had a tech job in another state. Jade was headed to a graduate botany program. Liam, shockingly, was staying local—Maya the barista had become Maya the girlfriend, and he'd landed a graphic design job. Chloe was taking a year to "rage-write a novel about the institutional failings of academia." Mason's YouTube channel, "Misguided Mysteries," had been bought by a media company for a stupid amount of money, on the condition he stop nearly electrocuting himself.
And Alexander... Alexander was staying.
It was the unspoken, painful truth beneath their robes. The ghost was tied to the place, to Room 302, to the psychic residue of his own unfinished life. He couldn't pack a suitcase and follow Ethan to Silicon Valley. He was a feature of Crestwood University, like the bad coffee and the crumbling gothic architecture.
The chancellor finally stopped talking. The dean of each school began calling names. As their friends' names were called—"Liam Chen! Chloe Davis! Mason Evans! Jade Flores! Ethan Grant!"—they walked, beaming and wobbly, to collect their diplomas, sharing secret, tearful grins.
They did it. They really did it.
The ceremony ended. The traditional cap-tossing moment arrived. A thousand black squares sailed into the bright blue sky, a chaotic, beautiful symbol of release.
As the caps rained back down, the Survivors Club huddled together, a tight knot in the swirling crowd of celebrating families.
"It's over," Liam said, his voice thick. "What do we do now?"
"Now," said a familiar, pedantic voice from directly above them, "we have a final project."
They looked up. Alexander Plath was floating serenely above their heads, wearing a tiny, perfectly folded spectral mortarboard. He looked... different. Not sad. Radiant.
"Alex?" Ethan said. "What are you...?"
"Did you truly believe I would let you leave without a proper send-off?" he asked, his voice echoing with a new, powerful resonance. "That I, a being of pure intellect and profound sentimental attachment, would permit our dialectic to end with a handshake and a vague promise to 'keep in touch'? Please. I have more style than that."
He raised his translucent hands. And then, Alexander Plath, ghost of Crestwood University, gave his final lecture.
He didn't deconstruct the institution. He didn't critique the capitalist underpinnings of the graduation industrial complex.
He roasted them.
"Ethan Grant!" he boomed, his voice carrying across the now-quieting quad. Heads turned, searching for the source. "You entered this place thinking a spoon was a valid microwave repair tool! You leave it a man who hacked the mainframe to save a ghost! Your trajectory is not one of linear progress, but of spectacular, beautiful glitches! May your code always compile on the second try!"
Ethan's face turned red, but he was laughing.
"Mason Evans! You are a monument to chaotic good! A Dionysian force of nature wrapped in a hoodie! You turned your inability to sit still into a career! Never change! Or, if you must, change in a way that is entertaining to document!"
Mason gave a dramatic bow.
"Liam Chen! You carried more anxiety than a library during finals week, and yet you befriended the void itself! You learned to order the drink you actually wanted! You are proof that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to proceed while being utterly, completely terrified! Also, your sweater-vests have slightly improved!"
Liam wiped his eyes, smiling.
"Chloe Davis! Your sarcasm was a whetstone upon which we all sharpened our wits! You saw through every pretense, especially mine! You are the necessary corrective, the grit in the oyster! Do not let the world smooth your edges!"
Chloe saluted him with her now-empty iced coffee cup.
"And Jade Flores! Our calm center! Our keeper of ferns and facts! You were the only one who ever listened to my entire lectures! You understood that order and chaos are not opposites, but partners in a beautiful dance! Keep them all alive, Jade. You are the best of us."
Jade blew him a kiss.
He floated lower, his form shimmering in the afternoon light, addressing all of them now, his voice softening.
"You came here lost. You formed a tribe. You survived haunted dorm rooms, mad scientists, your own terrible cooking, and my relentless philosophical harassment. You did more than survive. You lived. Loudly, messily, brilliantly."
He looked at the campus around them, then back at his friends.
"My purpose was never to haunt a place. It was to be haunted by you. And you have left an indelible mark. So go. Be brilliant. Be ridiculous. Change the world, or just your little corner of it. And know this..."
He grinned, a wide, mischievous, luminous grin.
"...wherever you go, whatever you do, if you ever find yourselves facing a truly insurmountable problem, a moment of profound existential doubt..."
He paused for dramatic effect.
"...just ask yourselves: What Would the Lemon Do?"
And with that, Alexander Plath, philosopher, friend, ghost, and eternal pain in the astral plane, exploded.
Not in a destructive way. In a glorious, spectacular, and completely ridiculous way. He dissolved into a thousand tiny, glowing points of light—each one shaped like a tiny, perfect lemon. The "lemons" swirled around the five friends in a sparkling, citrus-scented vortex, a final, absurd, beautiful blessing.
Then, with a soft pop, they vanished.
The quad was silent for a beat. Then, the Survivors Club burst out laughing, crying, hugging each other tightly.
He was gone. But he was everywhere.
As they walked away from the quad for the last time as students, towards their waiting, uncertain futures, they all felt it. A lightness. A readiness. And deep in their pockets, or tucked into a bra strap, or slipped into a wallet, each of them found a single, perfect, impossibly real yellow lemon.
Mason held his up, sunlight glinting off the bright peel. "So," he said, his voice cracking just a little. "Who's hungry?"
They linked arms, a chain of black robes and bright futures, and walked off the stage of their old life, laughing, leaving behind the ghost, the grandeur, and the glorious, beautiful mess of it all.
They had survived. More than that, they had lived.
And that was the greatest graduation gift of all.