SLAY

by Brittney Morris

  “Wyatt didn’t say anything to you after we left the room, did he? Because I let him out of my sight for five minutes while he went to pee, and if he came back in here—”

  “It’s not Wyatt either, Steph.”

  She looks lost, her eyes searching mine like she’s waiting for me to announce that somebody’s dead. She leans forward and takes my hands, and I’m worried I’ll start getting worked up again. I think of Dred and I think of Cicada. What if he sent her a message too? What if she quits being a mod and I have no one to back me up? What if I end up alone?

  Steph’s eyes narrow, analyzing me.

  “You’re afraid of something,” she says.

  How is she always right? I swallow and look away. Would she get it if I told her?

  “You don’t always have to be the voice of reason around here, you know,” she continues, squeezing my hands between hers. “People forget that strong Black women need support too. I know I like to talk, but tonight I’m here to listen.”

  I look up at Steph and think of what a relief it would be to tell her everything. About the game, about Jamal, about Dred. I have to talk to someone, and besides Cicada, she’s the closest thing I have to a friend. She wouldn’t tell everyone about this if I really stressed that she shouldn’t, right? She knows the gravity of the situation by now, with it all over the news, and with literal lives on the line. She wouldn’t. I have to tell her. Steph is here, with me, in my room. She’s real, and for once she’s listening and not talking. I look into her eyes and imagine her sitting at her computer, typing this to people in chat. She’s not policing what I’m saying, she’s not here to reprimand me or judge my words. She’s 100 percent support right now, and I want to believe she’d do the same if I let her into the game.

  “Hey . . . uh . . .” I squeeze her hands. “There’s something you should probably know about me, Steph.”

  “That you play SLAY ?”

  I’m not sure if my face looks guilty, shocked, annoyed, or impressed, but I’m all four. She looks so pleased with herself, like she’s caught me in a lie.

  “How did you know?”

  “You don’t get worked up about the news for just anything. The minute all this news dropped about Jamal, you changed. Every time the ‘SLAY murder’ comes up, you shut down. This game means a lot to you for a reason.”

  I think back to last night, right here in my room, when Steph led Harper and Wyatt to the kitchen to spare me having to continue that conversation. She could see just how much it rattled me, and now she deserves to know why. The whole story.

  “I invented it,” I say.

  Her face goes flat. Her eyebrows fly up. “You invented what? SLAY ?”

  I nod.

  “I don’t understand. How . . . How did you ‘invent’ it?” She’s using air quotes like I’m speaking in metaphors.

  “I invented it, as in, I built and launched, and now maintain, the game.”

  There’s a pause as her eyes get huge, but eventually one hand flies over her mouth and she squeezes the life out of my hand with the other as the implications sink in one by one.

  “Holy shit—you’re Emerald!”

  “Shh,” I urge. Mom and Dad sleep lightly, and their bedroom is right above mine. She lowers her voice to a whisper, but she sounds like she’s hyperventilating.

  “Holy shit—no, no, we dueled! Like, last week! Do you remember? I’m Hyacinth!”

  “Wait, you SLAY ?”

  “ ’Course I SLAY.” She shrugs as if I should’ve known by now. “I’m a self-respecting Black queen who just so happened to beat you by six hundred points in the Savanna last week. Speaking of the Savanna, what’s with the new gray rhinos you threw in there? They glitch out whenever they get near water and fall right through the ground.”

  My own sister SLAYs and I didn’t even know it. We dueled, and I didn’t know it. I remember her character now—a tall girl in all pink with flowers woven into a thirty-foot braid behind her. Her character is beautiful just like her, and smart just like her.

  “How long did it take you to make?”

  “Make what?”

  “The whole game!”

  “I’ve been working on it for three years now. Cicada and I have been using textures and character models from various players who are also artists and coders.”

  “I can’t believe it!” she says, her eyes measurably brighter. “My own big sister is gamemaster of SLAY!”

  “You’re the only one who knows, Steph. This doesn’t leave this room. Not for anything, understand? I can’t tell anyone else. Now you know why people calling it the ‘SLAY murder’ cuts me so deep. It means a boy my age in Kansas City was killed because of me.”

  Even saying it makes my chest tighten up. My throat hurts. I want to say more, but I can’t even bring myself to look at Steph right now. I keep my eyes to the ground, and my voice breaks as I continue, “His death was my fault.”

  “Jamal Rice?” she says, leaning forward and looking into my eyes. “His death was absolutely not your fault. Have you read anything at all about the killer? Jeremiah Marshall? His rap sheet is a mile long: grand theft auto, assault, illegal possession of firearms, and misdemeanor arson, whatever the hell that is. If it’s arson, it sounds like a felony to me—”

  “This is serious, Steph!” I snap. “A boy is dead because of a disagreement over something I created. There’s nothing you can say that will convince me there wasn’t something I could’ve done to prevent this. And people are calling me a racist! They’re saying SLAY is an online gang! Some guy sent me a message earlier today threatening to sue me unless I agree to duel him—”

  “What? What a pleb,” she says, standing up and beginning to pace. “He wants in, you say?”

  “Yeah, he’s all up in my DMs and everything.”

  “Wait, you gave him a passcode?”

  “No, he just took one! I don’t know where he got a passcode from—some friend of his.”

  “One coon-ass friend of his.”

  “Steph,” I hiss. She knows I hate that word. “I’m telling you this because I don’t know what to do, and you seem to always know what to do.”

  “Have you gotten a lawyer?”

  I shake my head. “I talked to one, just out of curiosity, when I went to downtown Bellevue earlier today. She’s not a civil rights lawyer, but from what she said, Dred might have a case.”

  “Who’s Dred?”

  “The guy who keeps harassing me. Dred, as in Dred Scott.”

  There’s such a long pause that I eventually look up at her. Her eyes have narrowed and darkened, and her mouth is hanging open.

  “Oh, hell no,” she says. “He doesn’t know what family he’s messed with. Where does he live? I know you can see his IP address.”

  “Actually, I can’t see players’ IP addresses,” I say. When I created Emerald, I was thinking solely about how I could share her with the world, not about tracking geographical locations of eventual trolls. Oh, naive freshman me.

  “But you’re the developer! Can’t you ban him?”

  “I could, but if he wants to sue on the basis of discrimination, banning him might be the worst thing I could do, right?”

  “So let me get this straight. The world is demanding justice for Jamal, demanding to know who you are, and you decided hiding in your room was the best way to handle it?” Steph is whisper-screaming at me. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?”

  “I’m telling you now, Steph, because I have no one else to talk to. Cicada is offline, my inbox has blown up, and Mom and Dad would know my identity. And you already know why I can’t tell Harper and Wyatt. They’d think I’m a racist. All I ever wanted to do was escape into this magical world where for once I don’t have to act a certain way because I’m Black, and where I don’t have to answer certain questions because I’m the Black authority in the room, and where if I do something that’s not stereotypically Black, I’m different.”

  Steph is staring into my lamp
now quietly, thinking, until she says softly, “I see why you like Malcolm then.”

  I know why I like Malcolm. Malcolm has never treated me like the different one. Since he’s the only other Black student at Jefferson—aside from Steph and her new Beta Beta recruit Jazmin—my relationship with him has always been based on sameness, and what we have in common. But he’s more pro-Black than I am. He reads Baldwin, Walker, Ellison, and even Du Bois, who—God rest his soul—reads less like an anthem of the Black experience and more like a refrigerator manual. It’s dense, it’s hard to get through, and sometimes fiction just sounds more fun. Sometimes SLAY just sounds more fun. Malcolm makes me feel guilty for not being “Black enough,” even with all his talk of rebelling against the concept of a “good Negro.” He’s pro-Black and antiwhite, two ideologies that sometimes overlap but are not the same thing. He’s pro a lot of things, but to realize he’s not nearly as progressive as I thought—that’s hard for me to admit. The last thing I want to do is call my boyfriend a liar.

  I don’t hate white people like the news says I do. Harper and I have been friends since middle school, before SLAY was even a thought. I’ve been to all her birthday parties, and she’s been to all of mine. But she exhausts me sometimes because even though we’re friends, she’ll never really get what it’s like to be me. But now I don’t think Malcolm will ever get what it’s like to be me either. I think I love SLAY so much because we’re a mutually empathetic collective. As we duel, as we chat, there’s an understanding that “your Black is not my Black” and “your weird is not my weird” and “your beautiful is not my beautiful,” and that’s okay. It brings tears to my eyes if I think about it too long. And here I thought I wasn’t a crier.

  I say nothing to Steph for fear that my voice might crack, and instead I wait for her to keep talking.

  “You realize what you have to do, right?”

  I don’t know what she’s getting at. Knowing Steph, it’s something drastic, like hunt Dred down and kill him.

  “No,” I say. She sucks her teeth in disappointment that I haven’t telepathically reached the same verdict she has.

  “Drag him.”

  “You want me to roast him in front of the SLAY community?”

  “No, for once I’m not suggesting you use your words. Battle him. This is your game! Who is he to come up into our community and demand anything?”

  Spade’s words come back to me now: You are a queen, and this is your game.

  But logically, what would it prove? We battle, I win, then what? Maybe there is something to sister telepathy, because Steph answers the question I’ve just asked myself.

  “You win, and he drops the threats and leaves you alone.”

  “And if he wins?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  • • •

  Later that night, after the pizza arrives and Steph and I eat the whole thing and I’m finally starting to doze off under my covers, my phone buzzes with a text.

  Malcolm: I’m reading The 48 Laws of Power. WYD?

  Me: I’m in bed.

  Malcolm: In bed or sleeping?

  Ordinarily this would be the part where we open FaceTime and wish one of us were over the other’s house. But right now, all I can think about is Dred. It sucks. I couldn’t even finish my duel with Spade today because I was so distracted by real-life problems, and when I’m talking to real live people that I care about, people I’ve promised my future to, like Malcolm, I can’t stop thinking about the game. How do I juggle both? Can I keep existing like this, as Kiera, and as Emerald? I don’t know what else to say to Malcolm tonight.

  Me: Sleeping. Sorry.

  I lock my phone and roll over.

  10. AWAY GAME

  * * *

  BEIJING, CHINA

  My name is Maurice, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now than in my tiny hotel room here in Beijing.

  When I open the door and slip the key card into the slot to turn on the lights, I’m met with the scent of lemon and household cleaners. Housekeeping was here, even though I’m checking out in the morning.

  I let the door shut behind me and step out of my brown Louis Vuittons, which at the time I thought were too expensive but am now grateful for. They’re sturdy but soft inside, making my feet much less achy at the end of a long day than my old Nauticas. I spot a new bottle of water on the counter next to two new coffee mugs, empty the bottle into the kettle, and set it to boil. Although everyone in China assures me that boiling the tap water is safe enough, why take the chance when hotels eagerly replenish water bottles and tea bags every morning?

  I shrug out of this enormous coat that fits me a bit weird in the shoulders. It’s March, and the weather outside is surprisingly cruel. I had to buy this coat from one of the shops that line the streets a quarter mile from the conference center downtown. I loosen my tie, slip off my blazer, and make myself a cup of English breakfast tea, which I’m shocked they have. This is the first time I’ve seen anything but green tea in my hotel room basket. I sink into the edge of the bed and sip it gratefully, letting it warm my insides.

  The tea is gone too fast, and I set the mug on the bed, lean back against the pillows, and close my eyes. I could sleep like this if I let myself drift off—pants, dress shirt, belt, and socks still on. That number that’s been running through my head all day crops up again. Six dollars and sixty-five cents.

  Six dollars and sixty-five cents sounds pretty affordable, but when multiplied by sixty thousand, it’s . . . not a good number. But Mr. Min insists that’s the lowest he can offer, and as much as I want to keep haggling, it’s the lowest offer I’ve gotten out of all fifty-some trips, and it’s the factory with the most airtight safety regulations. As a responsible business owner, I should probably keep researching to find a manufacturer who’s ethical and cheap. But I really don’t want to come back to Beijing. I’m looking forward to spending at least a month straight with Sylvie, sharing cappuccinos at our breakfast table every morning, debating whether we should leave the parlor window closed so I don’t freeze to death, or leave it open so she can hear the bluebirds while we eat.

  A knock at the door startles me from my thoughts.

  “Yes?” I ask into my empty hotel room. No response. I peel myself from the bed with the most hushed sigh of frustration I can manage and drag myself to the door. There’s no peephole, so I unlock the dead bolt and crack open the door. Two women stand there looking up at me with big smiles. One has her hair in a short bob with bangs, and she’s about a foot shorter than my wife, who’s five foot ten. The other is my height, with her hair tied into a bun at the nape of her neck, her dark eyes looking exhausted despite her smile. They’re dressed in matching white, short-sleeve button-up blouses that look freshly ironed and black pants, and they’re each holding a neatly folded white towel.

  “Hi,” says the shorter woman in a soft, sweet voice. She holds out the towel to me and asks, “Massage?”

  I look from her face to the taller woman’s, and she nods in confirmation. First, exhausted, unthinking me considers whether I would actually like for two women to enter my hotel room, as a lone Black man in the middle of Beijing, where any man off the street speaks Chinese better than I do, and where I would have the worst time acquiring a lawyer, let alone talking to my cellmates in jail. And then I reply with my best pronunciation of “Bù, xièxiè.” No, thank you.

  They look at each other in surprise and contest my reply together.

  “Free,” they say simultaneously.

  “Bù, xièxiè,” I say again, with a shake of my head this time. The hotel manager must have added a free massage to my account to thank me for the several times I’ve stayed here. But free or not, I know how this might look to someone on the outside. I wish Sylvie were here. She’d love a massage, and I’d feel so much more comfortable with this situation if we were getting massages together.

  The taller woman nods enthusiastically and backs away from the door, but the short woman stays and keeps
staring up at me curiously.

  “Uh . . . ,” she begins, looking like she’s trying to think of what to say to me. I know that face. I make that face all the time. It’s the face of someone who doesn’t speak the language they so desperately wish they spoke right now.

  “Uh, I, uh . . . ,” she says.

  The taller woman says something to her in Chinese that I can’t decipher.

  The shorter woman spits a single syllable back to her: “Shì.” Yes. She looks back up at me with wide eyes, visibly gripping the towel tighter before sinking down and setting the towel right there in the middle of the floor. Then she pulls her phone out of her back pocket and begins typing with trembling thumbs.

  I’m so confused. What’s happening? I begin to back away slowly and ease the door closed.

  The short woman notices what I’m doing and exclaims, “Ah! Wait!”

  I’m trying to be polite, but at this point I’m just wondering what else these two could want from me. The taller woman is looking at me so apologetically, I wonder if I’m about to become the next article in the murder column of the Beijing news tomorrow in a language my wife won’t be able to understand.

  Every instinct in me says to retreat into my room and shut the door before she can do anything unpredictable, but just before I resolve to do so, she’s holding up her phone screen to me enthusiastically. Her perfectly manicured hand is shaking so badly, I have to hold the corner of it just to read what’s on the screen.

  The translator app says, Can I take a picture with you?

  I look at her again. She has the eyes of a superfan asking a celebrity for an autograph.

  I’m used to being asked for photos, actually. I’m one of maybe six Black men I’ve seen since beginning my excursions to China to find a suitable manufacturer. And I’m definitely the only one with a hairstyle that’s a fade on the bottom and five-inch dreadlocks on top. A group of three waitresses once asked me in an Indian restaurant in Shanghai if they could take my picture because they said I look like Will Smith. I don’t see a single feature between us that’s alike, but if three beautiful women want to tell me I look like Will Smith, I’m not going to complain. But this question comes up at least once every time I fly out here, like I’m a damn circus act. I’m a normal human being in Paris, but as a Black man in Beijing, I’m a celebrity.