I arrive at the edge of the Swamp to find scores of characters clustered around a single blank patch of gray cobblestone arranged in a swirly pattern I spent way too many hours designing. The arenas in each region were carefully crafted. Cicada and I designed this one together in the deepest part of the Swamp. This arena isn’t made of diamond, and it doesn’t project the northern lights across the skybox, and it doesn’t even look like an arena from an aerial view. The building itself is actually camouflaged until one of us gives the word.
I lower myself to the cobblestone patch—another developer-only spot on the map that started as a design zone so I could actually build the brick pattern without characters walking through here. It’s sunset now, and the sky through the trees is a brilliant orange-and-pink watercolor piece that I bought from an indie Black artist on DevelopArt. It turned out gorgeous from this angle, and I decide it was worth the twenty bucks. I’m realizing now how much allowance and tutoring money I’ve put into this place. The Swamp trees—the roots that protrude from the water—are actually duplicates of a commissioned piece from the same artist. They were forty dollars—Claire’s forty dollars. We’ve both wagered so much tonight. So much depends on me winning, and thinking about it is just making it worse, but I can’t stop thinking about it because there are only ten minutes left until the duel.
Me: What if he wins?
Cicada: Turn around.
For a minute, I fully expect Claire to be standing behind me in my room, but I glance over my shoulder, and there’s her character, Cicada, standing in the middle of what will soon transform into Congo Square Arena. It’s a name we agreed on together, after a section of Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans, Louisiana, which used to be the only safe place for enslaved Black people to gather while they were under the rule of the French. They would sing, dance, set up booths where they could sell goods to raise money to buy their freedom. And they would make music that I would give anything to be able to hear today. It was Pike Place Market before Pike Place Market was cool. Fitting that she and I should be here, together, American and French, in the middle of Louis Armstrong Park.
Cicada and I almost match, with our long robes trailing behind us, mine green, hers white. She and I have dueled here before many times through the years, and I’m wishing so badly to be able to send everyone else home, lay out my six cards, and her six, and duel under the rising moon without anything to lose. But I know that can’t happen, and the reminder comes as a slap across the face as Dred’s message appears in the corner of my screen in a private chat window.
Dred: You ready to duel, chocolate puddin’?
My nose wrinkles reflexively, but I tell myself that nobody who feels prepared for an exam has to resort to mind games to get an advantage, and I write him back.
Me: Only if you are, stale sourdough bread.
I open Cicada’s chat box again and write:
Me: Here we go. 2 minutes till showtime.
Cicada: Even if we lose, I’ll rebuild it from scratch with you if I have to.
Me: Hopefully we won’t have to.
Cicada runs forward and throws her arms around my shoulders, and I squeeze her back. I shut my eyes and pretend she’s standing here in my room with me, and we’re hugging, just the two of us without a care in the world, and when all of this is over, we’re going to laugh about that guy Dred and how he almost ruined the whole game.
But first, I have to win.
When the hug is finally over—although neither of us wants it to be—Cicada raises her arm and whooshes up into the sky, and I activate the arena. I lift my arms high into the air and yank my fists down to my carpet as hard and fast as I can. The carpet doesn’t respond, but the cobblestones arranged in the middle of the Swamp begin to slide against each other and swirl around faster and faster. The trees are rising up on all sides, their roots still in the water, which I’ve programmed to stay completely still and not pool in the middle of the arena. Characters are standing in the water, ascending into the night sky, and I watch as the ground itself lifts up into a bowl so high that I can barely see the top without the moonlight blinding my eyes. I can see the stars now, but only if I look directly above me. The circle is getting smaller and smaller as the bowl grows into a vase as high as a skyscraper, and all at once, light explodes through the arena.
My eyes take a moment to adjust, but once they do, I look up to see Cicada floating down through the center like a bald Beyoncé with a million angel wings flying out from all sides of her dress. I roll my eyes. Classic, extra, Cicada. If I ever meet Claire in real life and get a chance to introduce her to Steph, I know humanity will never see the end of their conversation.
“Kings and queens,” she bellows through the arena. Her voice is clear and crisp. Wait. Her voice? Her voice?
My fingers fly to my inbox.
Me: What are you doing? Why is your mic on?
She doesn’t text back. Instead she speaks!
“Emerald, if this is going to be my last duel, I’m not going to spend it typing at a keyboard.”
It’s so strange to actually hear her! Her voice is light and airy, soft, with a faint hint of a French accent whenever an R or a T comes up. It makes her real. It makes her human. It makes her Claire. I watch her fly up to the stands again, the spotlight following her as she reaches out toward one screaming fan. I’m glad we created that invisible guard around this thing so he can’t actually fall into the arena, because he’s reaching so far out with his arm just inches from Cicada’s that I would be scared if I were him.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” she says as she drifts away and back toward the middle of the arena. “Don’t let this French accent fool you.”
I can’t help it. The laughter bubbles out of me. What in the world is this girl doing? I suddenly regret not having her mic on all the time. She’s a better announcer than I am! The crowds are loving her. I can hear farther up in the rafters the soulful howls of Zama’s followers. It’s a full moon against a cobalt sky. Too perfect.
Dred: Gorgeous night for a lynching.
I shut my eyes and try so hard to ignore it, but it’s like the words are burned into my mind. Black gamers go through this shit every day, I remind myself. It’s just part of gaming while Black. In pretty much any online game besides SLAY, Ms. Coleman’s kids would have to hear it when they come home from school. Dr. Abbott hears it in the presence of his nephews while they’re playing Legacy of Planets. This racism crops up in so many places, I should be used to it by now. But I shouldn’t have to be. Not here. Not in SLAY. I tell myself I’m here to defend that right to safety, to defend this space. I am a queen, and this is my game.
I close out of his message with such fury that I’m glad it’s a virtual screen so it doesn’t crack in front of my face. Cicada is standing before me now with her arms raised to the multitudes—the five hundred thousand or more who came to see if they’ll get to log in tomorrow.
I take a deep breath as Claire begins to speak again in that subtle accent of hers.
“Welcome, kings and queens, gods and goddesses, artists and warriors, pharaohs one and all.”
Damn, she’s good. If Emerald survives this duel, I relinquish all announcing privileges to her. I’ll stick to fixing bugs.
“We are all here tonight to witness the duel of our lives. Our queen!”
Cicada extends her hand in my direction, and the whole arena erupts with shrieks of praise. I can barely see any individual characters—not because of the lights or the height of the arena, but because of text bubbles. I read a few of their messages lit up in colors across the rainbow.
“We love you, Emerald!”
“Thank you, Emerald!!!!! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ”
“Emerald, you have to make more games like this!”
“You can take him, Emerald—drag his ass!”
“LONG LIVE EMERALD! LONG LIVE CICADA!”
“LONG LIVE OUR QUEENS!”
“LONG LIVE SLAY!”
I look up at the hu
ndreds of thousands of characters flailing their arms and waving their flags and robes, thumping their spears against the ground beneath the water, and their noise blooms into chanting.
“Emerald! Emerald! Emerald! Emerald!”
Whatever I said before about never getting tired of being able to raise my hand for silence, I’d take this instead any day.
“Our queen,” says Cicada again over the roar of the crowd, “against a usurper.”
The crowd’s tone sours, and a low rumbling symphony of boos and growls and barking from farther up in the rafters cries out their disgust.
“A thief and a terrorist,” hisses Cicada. “Merely someone who wants attention, power, and control.”
More enraged howling from the crowd. A group of kings in the front row across the arena are whooping and hollering like a pack of hyenas, painted in gorgeous white body paint and red and orange masks with big black eyes.
“Dred Scott, the slave who was told by the Supreme Court of the United States that he was not human enough to buy his own freedom,” Cicada continues. “This usurper, Dred, has named himself such because he knows no weapons but intimidation. But today, he is in our world! Our Swamp! Our game! And we will not have it!”
Cicada’s voice has begun to falter, and I have to tell myself not to cry. My throat is closing up, and my chest is pounding as she announces finally, “Kings and queens, meet Dred.”
She points toward the only entrance to the arena—the one right behind us on the south side of the ring—and the door drops to reveal that huge silhouette of a man I met before on the plaza steps. He doesn’t know how lucky he is that I programmed that net in, otherwise he would have weapons, produce, baskets, animals, and whatever else people have in their inventory hurled straight at him right now.
He should be humble, being a guest in my house. But he steps through the gateway and down the steps wearing a red robe as thick as a shag carpet, which dusts the floor behind him. I swear he’s used a hack to grow another three feet, until I notice his boots, which have a platform under them that’s more than a few inches tall. He steps into the light, and the crowd roars into outrage at what they see. I want to scream with them. I ball my fists in the middle of my room and want to kill him right where he stands. He’s exchanged the faux swastika for face paint, which is jet black, from widow’s peak to chin. To walk into my game and try to take over is one thing, but to show up in Blackface? Now I’m pissed.
Cicada is silent for a moment, and she looks at me pleadingly, like she’s asking if there’s anything I can do. But I can’t. The face-paint option is available to all, and I included all colors, since Blackface was never a concern among a community of Black people.
A bright red block of text appears above his head that says, “Ready to dance?”
It’ll take an act of Black Jesus for me to wake up tomorrow, go to school, and walk past Wyatt in the hallway without carrying out an attempt on his life. My trembling hands open the keyboard, and I type so furiously that I have to backspace through multiple typos.
“I’m ready to duel. By the power of my ancestors, let’s get this over with.”
The audience roars their approval, and Cicada raises her arms again.
“These two warriors will duel for the throne. This mutineer against our queen, who has guided us through glitches and patches, who has forged weapons for us, who has heeded our cries for new clothes, new cards, new terrains, and new regions.”
She turns and looks down at me now.
“With whom I have stayed up so many nights designing these sacred cards, one by one by one.” She holds out her hand, and the deck scatters, sending individual cards drifting down through the arena. The gold pieces glint in the yellow arena lights, and I realize just how many there are. If fifty-two-card pickup feels like a spill, a thousand feels like a waterfall.
I smile as I watch her suck them all back up into one bell-shaped white sleeve and send them zooming out through the other.
“The rules of the duel are simple,” she recites. “Each dueler will draw six cards, two cards in each category: Hex, Battle, and Defense. Because this is a very special match, each dueler will pull a card from the top of the deck to decide who gets to play five seconds before the other. Defense cards beat Battle cards. Battle cards beat Hex cards. Duelers will play two cards each in three rounds. The scores will appear on the Megaboard as the game progresses.”
I glance up at the Megaboard to see those double zeros staring back at me, and I shut my eyes and pray—to whom, I’m not sure, my ancestors maybe, if they can hear me—to give me cards I can work with.
“Please,” I say aloud.
A knock at my door startles me back into reality. Oh God, of all the times for my mom to come knocking.
“Yes?” I ask as inconspicuously as I possibly can.
“Hey, Kiera, Mom and I are going to pick up Dad from work and go to dinner. Want us to bring you back anything?”
The first question that runs through my mind is why would Steph come knocking at my door in the middle of a duel? And then the realization sinks in. She’s keeping Mom and Dad out of the house for me! I can duel in peace! I can turn on my mic if I want! But on second thought, I don’t want Wyatt recognizing my voice. But whatever! I have the house to myself!
I don’t know how I’ll ever pay her back, but for now, I yell back, “No thanks!” and hope she hears the gratitude in my voice. I knew I could trust her to keep this secret, even if it means she’s going to miss most of the match.
I lower the headset back over my eyes, and I find Dred staring at me with a text box above his head that says, “Glitch?”
I mouth a swear word in the privacy of my room. The front door slams, and I type furiously.
“I was giving you a minute to breathe. Ready, Cicada.”
She nods. “Duelers, draw your initial card from the deck to determine who goes first.”
He draws one of my favorite cards—the McDonald’s Money card.
Every American Black child knows the term “McDonald’s money,” even if their parents never used it. It’s not from the McDonald’s Monopoly game (as Harper, who clearly hasn’t played it, asked me once). It’s the go-to response when you ask for McDonald’s. “You got McDonald’s money?”
And the conversation usually ends there, which is why it’s a Battle card.
Even if Wyatt now “knows” this card after studying it last night, he’ll never truly know it.
I draw my card and laugh. It’s perfect enough to make me want to dance where I stand in my room, and I might if I didn’t have five hundred thousand people watching me. But then I figure that it might be my last duel, and I’ll regret it if I don’t have a little fun. So I hold up the card, waving my right arm and sinking into a perfect nay-nay, tongue out and everything. The whole room shrieks with laughter and applause as I celebrate with a Michael Jackson spin and smoothly transition into the Running Man.
It’s the Shea Butter card. Smooth, creamy nectar of the motherland saving my twist-out and my virtual reality Nubian universe. “Thank you,” I whisper.
I can hear Cicada’s smile as she announces, “We have Dred with the McDonald’s Money card, and our queen with the Shea Butter card, come through. Defense card beats Battle card. Our queen goes first! Kings and queens, you know the drill.”
My chest is pounding as she holds up her hand and recites the next part.
“We are here first and foremost to celebrate Black excellence in all its forms, from all parts of the globe. We are different ages, genders, tribes, tongues, and traditions. But tonight, we are all Black—most of us. And tonight, we all SLAY.”
The audience erupts again, but I tune them out and keep my eyes on Dred.
“In-game betting on opponents,” recites Cicada, “hacking, lag mechanisms, and unapproved mods to characters, skills, and environments are strictly prohibited. And even under the given circumstances, no—”
The multitude of Black kings and queens finish the
sentence with her, as do I, while staring right into the eyes of Dred.
“Tomfoolery!”
Dred doesn’t say it along with us, because how would he know to say it? Even now, he’s probably oblivious to the fact that he is the tomfoolery. He shrugs one shoulder and cracks his neck, bouncing up and down like we’re about to start a boxing match.
“Duelers, select your cards!”
I shut my eyes as I draw blindly from the purple deck of Hex cards, the red deck of Battle cards, and the blue deck of Defense cards.
Come on, ancestors.
I look down at the six cards as Cicada bellows from above us, “The duelers will have ten seconds to arrange and study their six randomly selected cards in three . . . two . . . one. Go!”
All six of my cards fly up onto my screen in three rows of two, and I read the titles as fast as I can.
Hex 1: Black Love
Hex 2: Innovation
Defense 1: Hell Naw
Defense 2: Representation
Battle 1: That One Auntie’s Potato Salad
I look at my second Battle card, and I almost can’t believe it. The J’s card? Really? I grin and throw a silent thank you to my ancestors, or karma, or whatever made this happen. I’ll save that one for round two. For now, I have to figure out which combination to use in round one. Wyatt is a trickster in real life. He’s played countless pranks on me and Harper, although I’ve learned to watch for them and dodge them. He’ll save his Battle cards for later, which is when I’ll need at least one Defense card, in round three. That leaves three cards to choose from—Innovation, Black Love, and That One Auntie’s Potato Salad. The Innovation card is a 25 percent point boost, and since I have no points on the board, that leaves Black Love and Potato Salad.
I move both of those to the first-round slots, loving the passive-aggressiveness of it. My first duel with a white guy and I’m going to whip out the Black Love card in round one. And what does Wyatt know of the fear that comes with peeling back the Saran Wrap on a huge tinfoil pan of flavorless white potato mash? He’ll learn today.
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