“No, but seriously,” Harper says. “If Malcolm is here, let me know. I won’t care, but things might get weird if Wyatt comes in here.”
“Wait, is Wyatt here?”
She looks up at me and shrugs one shoulder. “Of course he’s here. He said he’d be here. He’s out in the hall, waiting for permission to enter the girls-only zone. I told him to be polite and ask first—”
As if on cue, a knock sounds at my bedroom door, and before I can protest, Harper replies, “Permission granted!” I’m not prepared for his interview questions. I’m not prepared for him.
“Yes, come in.” I shoot Harper a look for bringing him into my house. The door swings open, and I’ve never been so relieved to see my little sister in my life, still wearing her shoes and backpack. She smiles at me and then notices Harper.
“Hey, girl, heyyy,” she sings. She and Harper exchange an elaborate secret handshake I didn’t know they had.
“Heyyy,” replies Harper.
“Did you get the flyers printed for pledge?”
“I got Jazmin to do it. We’ll see how she does.”
“Brilliant.”
Steph and Harper sit down on the sofa and I sit crisscross on the pouf in the corner. While they launch into conversation, probably more Beta Beta Psi logistics, I pull out my phone and open WhatsApp.
Me: Sorry . A friend came over unexpectedly and I had to log off. What were you going to say?
Then the app responds for her.
Cicada is offline.
I let out a frustrated sigh before I remember I’m not alone in my room.
“You okay?” asks Steph.
“I mean, it’s a really sad story,” says Harper. “I don’t blame her.”
“Blame me for what?” I ask. I’m trying so hard to sound interested while I wonder if Cicada has had enough of me leaving her hanging. Emerald is still standing in her kitchen, meaning I left my character taking up space in her house. I know it’s all virtual, but it still seems inconsiderate, somehow.
“We were talking about that kid, Jamal, who was killed over a video game,” says Steph. “Did you hear about that?”
I look up at them, now trying not to look too interested. My hands are getting clammy as I pull my shirtsleeves over my palms.
“Yeah, it was on the news today.”
Harper’s eyes get huge. “Isn’t it so sad?” she asks. “I can’t believe how selfish humans are sometimes. We as a species should be past this.”
Why is it that whenever something like this appears on the news, people want to zoom out to the species level? People who want to get to the root of a problem, the source of the cancer—don’t they zoom farther in?
Another knock echoes from my door, and my parents don’t knock, leaving the only person left in the house. Again, Harper shouts, “Permission granted!” But this time when the door opens, an impish face with a huge, mischievous smile appears, and I take a long, deep breath.
“Hey, ladies,” he says, shutting the door a little too hard and glancing at me apologetically. “Hey, Kiers.”
He’s holding a notebook, already prepared to begin the interview. On one hand, I’m glad to be done talking about the game, but on the other hand, I’m dreading having to answer questions about whether white people are allowed to wear dreadlocks, as if there aren’t thousands of Black professors who teach the nuances of this stuff every day. I wonder what he thinks his article will be contributing to the conversation.
“Shoot, I forgot my pen,” he says, feeling around in his pockets.
I’m relieved but only for a moment, right up until Steph says, “We were just talking about the SLAY murder.”
My chest tightens. That’s what they’ve nicknamed it? The SLAY murder? That would make Jamal the SLAY victim—the victim of my creation. To think that if it weren’t for me, Jamal would be alive—it washes over me like a wave, the weight of it sinking into my chest. Jamal had a family, he had friends, and all those people on TV are now missing a piece of their lives, their futures, because of what I did.
I suddenly feel nauseated, and I want to leave the room and lock myself in the bathroom until they leave. Cicada would cry if she could hear this.
“Oh, the kid who was shot over that racist game?” asks Wyatt.
Did he just call SLAY racist? I turn and catch him rummaging around in my desk with his arm in my bottom drawer, and panic grips me. I forgot to lock it!
“No, no, what are you doing?” I demand, jumping up and running at him. He yanks his fingers out of the way of the drawer just as I slam it shut and pull the key from my pocket to lock it. “Do you keep pens in your bottom drawer? They’re in the pencil cup on the desk!”
My hands are trembling as I turn the key and hear the click, and then I glare up at him the hardest I’ve ever glared at him.
“Do you keep your tampons in there or something?” he says with a smirk.
My chest pounds, and I feel that sickening rage boil up inside me. Behind me, Steph clears her throat and changes the subject with what might have been my follow-up question, had I not had the first layer of my biggest secret almost exposed to the world.
“You said the game is racist?” she asks. “How?”
The room is silent, and I turn around to observe the answers from the two kids in the room who didn’t think they’d be getting interviewed today. Harper goes first.
“I mean, they said on the news that you have to have a passcode to get in, and only Black people have the passcode, and only Black people are given passcodes. Sure sounds like the game excludes people based on race. That’s the definition of racist.”
“How is it even legal?” asks Wyatt. “If I made a video game and said it’s only for white people, I’d be publicly ostracized, expelled, and probably fired from my job.”
Harper shrugs. “First of all, what job? Second, it isn’t legal. There are laws against that kind of discrimination. Right, Steph?”
Steph sits there with the smuggest grin and says, “It’s not racist.”
Harper and Wyatt look at each other in surprise, but I just smile. I’ve seen that smile of hers before—the one that always appears right before she drops knowledge on somebody. Her debate face. She stands up and makes her way to the middle of the room, and I get ready to watch the show.
“I want you to imagine for a minute,” she begins. “I know it’s going to be hard for both of you, but just imagine—that literally nothing was made for you. Your parents were denied a house because of their skin color, your grandparents were sprayed with fire hoses and ripped apart by dogs in the streets, your great-grandparents were housemaids and mammies and barely paid entertainers, and your great-great-grandparents were slaves. Every movie in your life is majority Black, all the characters in your favorite books have been cast darker in the movie adaptation for no reason, and every mistake you make is because of your skin color and because of “your background” and because of the music you listen to. You are the only white kids at a school of five hundred Blacks, and every Black person at that school asks you to weigh in on what it’s like to be white, or what white people think about this or that. It’s not fun.”
Holy shit, I’ve never seen Steph talk to Harper and Wyatt like this before, but her voice is impressively calm as she says all this, and apparently she’s not done!
“I’ve lived my entire life like this. Kiera has lived her entire life like this. If Black gamers want their own space online away from the eyes of the majority, let them have it. Y’all have Mummy and Legacy of Planets. Do you need to have everything?”
I’m smiling so big and my heart is so full. Steph has never sounded more grown-up than she does right now, standing in the middle of my room in jeans and a high-school sorority T-shirt. Maybe Steph understands me more than I thought she did. She really has been listening. Harper is staring at her in shock, like she doesn’t know her anymore. Wyatt is looking at me.
Harper clears her throat and says, “It’s not about needing t
heir own space, Steph.”
I don’t like the way she says the word “their,” but I stay silent because I want to hear how she could possibly refute the magic that my sister just spoke.
“It’s about the principle of exclusion,” she continues. “Haven’t we all been working toward desegregation for decades now? Haven’t we already determined that separate is not equal?”
“Forget all that,” says Wyatt. His face is pink, and his eyes are wild. “It’s about fairness. This is a free country. We can’t exclude them, and they can’t exclude us. The playing field stays level.”
I fold my arms and take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I’m shaking as I speak. “Video games do exclude us,” I say, finally. I can’t take being silent anymore. “Weren’t you listening? Haven’t you been paying attention? Think about the character selection in Legacy. The only way to play as a character with dark skin is to be a dwarf—an ugly, hog-nosed troll with big floppy ears and an underbite. That doesn’t count.”
“Oh, this is about skin color now, Kiers?” he hisses. “You’re going to stir up all this hate because you can’t play as a character with dark skin? Is that it?”
“No, Wyatt, that’s not it,” I snap. The rage is bubbling up in me like hot oil and if I don’t let off some steam, I’m bound to burn everyone in the room. “Most fantasy games are also Eurocentric. Castles, dragons, princesses, elves, Greek and Roman gods—all of that is your history—”
“Whatever,” he says. “That stuff is universal. Everyone knows European fairy tales, and game developers make what people know and want more of. Wasn’t Mummy Black enough? It’s set in Egypt, for God’s sake—the whole point was to defeat the gods and escape the pyramids with the Sun Ruby, remember?”
“Oh right, Wyatt,” says Steph. “A game set in one country in Africa. Our mistake for asking that Black people—12 percent of the American population—get a little more than that, maybe something about what it’s like to be Black in America? Specifically, what it’s like to be Black in America if you’re not dealing drugs, soliciting sex workers, or breaking out of prison?”
Wyatt keeps talking as if he hasn’t heard a word of what Steph and I just said.
“Whatever. If the developers really wanted to show us what it’s like to be Black in America, they wouldn’t have hung a big sign on the log-in screen that says ‘No whites allowed,’ ” he grumbles. “And it’s a video game, not Area 51. It’s only a matter of time before someone hacks in, tracks down the developers, and sues the shit out of them.”
The room goes dead silent. Wyatt is a bit redder in the face than he was when he walked in here. Harper is staring uneasily at her brother, and Steph is looking at me like, Do you see this mess?
I must be giving her the same look, because she clasps her hands together and asks, “Who wants a snack? Let’s all go to the kitchen. Kiera, want to meet us there in a few?”
I nod as she swings open the door and ushers Harper and Wyatt out of my space just before I hear Wyatt’s voice fade down the hallway, saying, “But seriously, when Dad comes home, I’m going to ask him about talking to Duncan.”
I don’t have the energy to even care who Duncan is—probably one of their dad’s rich coworkers. As my door clicks closed, I send a silent thank you into the air, grateful for Steph’s ability to see just how uncomfortable all this is making me, even though she doesn’t know the extent of the why. I lean my head back against the wall and take in the silence.
But all I can think about is Jamal. What do I do? A boy is dead because of me. His friend has announced on national news that our beloved world, the SLAY universe, exists. My game has been called racist. I, by extension, have been called racist. My sister is the only one who has my back, but she doesn’t even know I’m the developer. I have a friend in Paris I know nothing about, who is probably sick and tired of me being unreliable. Spelman is already disappointing me, and I don’t know why, and if I don’t go, I’ll be disappointing my sister and my boyfriend, the two most important people in my life.
I open my phone, take to Google, and search his name—Jamal Rice—which brings up dozens of photos of the same Black boy with narrow eyes and a button nose. Most of them are the same grainy photo of him standing on one side of a Ping-Pong table in front of a faded yellow wall with yellow lighting that makes it look like he might be at a gym or a Boys & Girls Club. He’s staring piercingly at the camera with a Ping-Pong paddle in one hand, making a peace sign with the other. I have to look away for fear of crying, but I can almost feel his eyes still on me. Without me, he would’ve had a chance to grow up.
I realize my hands are clasped hard enough to cut off circulation. My jaw hurts. My head hurts. I’m hungry but I don’t feel like eating.
I feel like escaping.
I slip my phone into my back pocket, lock my door, unlock my bottom drawer, don my VR gear, and dive into the game. My inbox has burgeoned from six hundred messages to over sixty thousand, and I already know it’s going to be full of stress. The subject lines confirm my suspicions.
ANUBIS IS DEAD??
WHERE’S ANUBIS????
WAS THE BOY ANUBIS?
Anubis = Jamal?? Domino = Jeremiah??
Vigil for Anubis @ Desert arena #BlackLivesMatter
#Justice4Anubis
#Justice4Jamal
Orisha Tribe Forever
Jamal Rice—Never forget
Ban Domino!
KING ANUBIS IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING.
My eyes are getting cloudy with tears again and I close out of my inbox, but not before one message catches my eye. I reopen the inbox and find it again. The subject is simple and soothing, like medicine.
Wanna battle?
I click on it. It’s from a player named Q.Diamond. I can’t reply yes fast enough. I need a break. I need to pretend for a few hours that everything is back to normal, that Jamal is still alive, that Harper and Wyatt won’t be back at my door soon asking why I haven’t joined them for snacks. My plan right now is to holler through the door that I’m not feeling well, and Harper and I will have to study another time, wait for them to leave, and then hop back into the game when Cicada might be online, so I can finally ask her what she wanted to tell me about herself. I hope she was joking, and that I won’t actually want to fire her after she tells me what it is.
I decide to send a follow-up message to Q.Diamond.
Me: I’ll battle you on one condition. Promise not to ask questions. Especially about Anubis. I need a break for a while.
Q.Diamond: You need a vacation. I get it. I won’t ask questions, but I will say this isn’t your fault and I know you’ll get us through this. You’ve gotten us through a lot.
It melts me. The you’ve gotten us through a lot part. And the us part. Who is us exactly? I know they’re probably talking about everyone who SLAYs. But I hope they don’t also mean us as in, the Black community. My throat closes at the thought. I’m just a game developer. I’m no pioneer. I’m certainly not qualified to lead the global crusade of Black people to victory. But I can’t help rereading that word “us,” and feeling something warm and tingly settle in the pit of my stomach. Responsibility? Pressure? The expectations of over half a million people? I don’t know what to say back, so I just click Start Duel.
Me: Where to?
Q.Diamond: You pick.
Me: No preference. I know them all.
Q.Diamond: Swamp region. It’s my home.
Me: Done.
I scroll through the list of all six regions, ranked by popularity—Tundra, Desert, Savanna, Forest, Rain Forest, and finally, the Swamp. My heart begins to pound as I click on it, and the three Swamp arenas appear in a drop-down menu—Beyoncé Bayou, Bluegrass Basin, and Drinking Gourd. I select Beyoncé Bayou, and the trees spring up in the murky water around me. An alligator swims across the screen behind Q.Diamond, but it’s just a shell—not dangerous if you fall into the water during a match. Mosquitoes buzz in my ear. Cicada has made them sound a little too real
, but I guess nothing can really be too real in a VR game. I have to remember to compliment her when she’s online later.
The square dueling ring rises up from the water under me, and then Q.Diamond appears. Their face is covered up with a jet-black mask. They have two long, dark elf ears and bright red deer antlers, and their hair is long, pin-straight, and paper-white. Their eyes are sky blue, they have the muzzle of a dog, their arms are purple tentacles, and they stand upright, balancing on a hot-pink-and-green mermaid tail.
They’re truly a sight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character so . . . unique. Not what I would’ve chosen, but it’s somehow a relief to see the really out-there characters show what they can do and let their imaginations run hog wild. Although I can’t imagine why a character this magnificent would want to live in the Swamp region. Most characters who live in the Swamp are beginners, because it’s an easy place to start the game. Anyone can find fish bones and turn them into arrowheads. It’s a great way for novices to make fast money. Most of the more advanced characters who make their homes here weave baskets from vines and turn the sturdy wood from these trees into canoes to sell to those who live near water in other regions. They almost always wear browns and greens to blend in with their surroundings, as many aren’t in the game to duel, but to make a virtual life for themselves, like you can do in Legacy of Planets. But I don’t know what Q.Diamond is doing living in the Swamp. They have absolutely no camouflage.
They reach up and remove the black mask, and I realize their face is painted in vertical rainbow stripes, a design I released for Pride Month last year. It didn’t cause as much of an uproar as I suspected it might, which was a pleasant surprise. I’m happy it made Q.Diamond happy. I’m grateful for little reminders like this, reminders that this game wasn’t a mistake.
The deck of golden cards shuffles itself in the air between us before distributing our six cards, and then the timer begins counting down from ten seconds. I click and drag my cards into pairs at random without really looking at them, since I know all the cards and I want Q. to have a fair shot. I reach up and stretch my arms high above my head and yawn.
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