SLAY

by Brittney Morris

  Wyatt: You could’ve just told me, Kiers. This would’ve all made a lot more sense. I wouldn’t have said some of the stuff I said.

  That one catches me off guard. Would Wyatt really have said anything different to me if he’d known I was the creator? Even though he’s not quite Dred-level problematic like I thought, his words still light up in my mind, burning me like hot coals: We can’t exclude them, and they can’t exclude us.

  Us. Them. He said both of those words so casually, as if Steph and I weren’t standing right in front of him, talking about us like we weren’t even there. I don’t know if I believe he’ll be different. I just know it’s going to take me a long time to trust him with anything.

  I bypass all those and open the convo from the person who deserves an explanation more than anybody.

  Me: I’ve seen the pic. I have a confession.

  Cicada: ?

  Me: I know who Dred is. I thought it was this kid at my school, but it turned out to be my boyfriend. He hacked my webcam and the pic is all over.

  The one time my IP address shuffle command fails. I could kick a wall. The hell did I do to deserve such god-awful luck? Steph leans over to me and asks, “Does it hurt?”

  “Does what hurt?”

  Steph is looking at me with pursed lips like I’ve missed something, and then I remember she’s talking about my arm. Duh. I shrug my other arm, which I didn’t think would hurt, but it does, and I wince.

  “Peachy, huh?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Not now, Steph.”

  “So how’d they figure out it was you?” she asks. “And who is ‘they’? I hope you realize the longer you wait to tell me what’s going on, the more I find out from Twitter. And you don’t want me to find out this way. There’s some nasty shit about you on here.”

  I can’t keep it from her forever.

  “I thought Dred was Wyatt.”

  I can feel her looking at me, and she chuckles.

  “What? Seriously?”

  “He talked about wanting to sue Emerald, so is it really that far-fetched an idea?”

  “You really haven’t talked to Harper about this, have you? She said her parents won’t let Wyatt sue over something so arbitrary, and since he’s still a minor, he legally can’t on his own.”

  Thank God. There’s no lawsuit from Wyatt, and there’s no lawsuit from Malcolm. Hopefully the news was blowing everything way out of proportion for clicks and views, and no actual lawsuit comes out of this. Then I can start sleeping at night again. I check my messenger app again and find no texts from Malcolm. What’s wrong with me? Why am I still checking for texts from him? He’s taken everything I’ve worked for—nullified all the effort I’ve put into keeping my identity a secret. He took every word of criticism, every bitter assessment of this virtual world, the opinions of all the Brandon Cannons and Jans and Dereks of the world, and funneled them straight to my front door. Everyone knows I’m Emerald. Everyone knows my face. I’ll probably be on the news tomorrow. People could easily track down my address. I could get doxxed. Mom and Dad will see and find out their daughter is responsible for developing a video game that got a boy killed.

  “So how’d you figure out Dred wasn’t Wyatt?”

  I take a deep breath and brace for the inevitable I-told-you-so. There’s no avoiding it now.

  “Dred is Malcolm.”

  Steph puts her phone down and stares at me for a solid minute. I finally look at her and nod. Her eyes are huge and unblinking.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  I nod again and notice a new message from Cicada.

  Cicada: Dred is your boyfriend?? You gave your white boyfriend a SLAY passcode?!

  Me: No, my bf is Black. He disguised himself as a white supremacist.

  Cicada: Why?

  It hurts as I text her back, but I know I can’t avoid the truth, and I know it means admitting that Malcolm isn’t the man I thought he was.

  Me: Because he doesn’t recognize Black excellence when he sees it.

  According to Malcolm, if Black people are to progress, we need absolute focus, relentless drive, and undying ambition, and that looks like something very specific to him. Unless we’re starting our own businesses, building a nuclear family, and avoiding “white propaganda,” we’re not progressing. But the nuclear family doesn’t work for everyone. Not every Black man has to be an entrepreneur. We don’t all have to go to college. And not every piece of information and every social construct is a trick of the “white man.” He’s wrong. He’s been so wrong about everything. He acts like Harper and Wyatt are the enemy, and I hate it. I’ve always hated it. Harper and Wyatt may be clueless about a lot of things, often willfully. They may ask unfair questions and misunderstand me and make me feel like I’m some kind of alien from a distant planet. And yeah, there are white people out there who are full-blown bigots, racist white supremacist assholes, many who literally hope we die off. But Malcolm made me realize another threat to my people, one that’s less obvious, one that creeps in slowly like a disease. The threat of self-hatred. The idea that Black people who don’t live up to whatever standards society has are somehow less deserving of love and support. And if all of Malcolm’s behavior so far hasn’t convinced me of this, this thing with Dred certainly has. Fuck respectability politics.

  Tears are streaming down my face as I look up at Steph.

  “He hacked my webcam after the duel. He said there’s no lawsuit. He just wants the game to end.”

  “Why the hell would he want that?!” She’s whisper-screaming at me in this waiting room now, and I look up and around at all the old people sitting in here with us on their phones and magazines, and I hope none of them recognize my face if they’re reading the news.

  Steph’s eyes narrow.

  “Is this part of his ‘video games are evil’ thing? He hates them so much that he tried to destroy the one you made? Hates them so much that he outed you online and just invited the trolls to eat you alive? Is he trying to die today? Because I will find him.”

  She’s talking louder now, and people are looking at us.

  “Steph, shh,” I say. She rolls her eyes and lets out a frustrated sigh.

  The minute the nurse comes back and hands me some papers that explain what to do with a freshly broken clavicle, and a prescription for enough ibuprofen to knock out a horse, Steph snatches up her handbag.

  “Come get in this car so I can tell you what I really think and not all these people.”

  By the time we get to the car, Steph has finished explaining to me that I’ll need to make up a story for Mom and Dad that explains why my face is all over the Internet, why I’m in a harness with a broken clavicle, why I didn’t tell them about any of it, and why they don’t need to insist I stop playing SLAY because it poses a threat to my health. Now she’s back to talking about Malcolm, speeding down the street—she always speeds when she’s angry—and I’m sitting in the front seat watching the road, hoping we don’t die on the way home.

  “I just can’t believe a human being would actually do that to someone they claim to love. I don’t understand. I hope your breakup text to him was iconic. I want to read it later.”

  There’s no breakup text. There won’t be from me. Despite everything, I can’t let him go, and I can’t sit here and think about it because I’ll completely lose it. I choose not to reply, and instead I direct my attention to Cicada’s text.

  Cicada: So your boyfriend turned out to be a psychopath. I’m so sorry, Kiera. ♥

  Despite all that’s going on, I take a minute to notice how good it feels to see Cicada call me by my real name. To see Claire call me by my real name. But her words also sting. The word “psychopath” stings.

  Me: Yeah.

  I say “yeah,” but I don’t mean it. Malcolm’s not a psychopath, necessarily. He’s extremely passionate and extremely confused. And he hates me for going behind his back.

  “You did break up with him, right?” asks Steph.


  I stay quiet, hoping she’ll drop it, but it’s Steph, and she doesn’t drop anything this important.

  “Kiera!”

  “What, Steph?”

  “If you don’t cut that Negro out of your life, I’ll do it for you.”

  I get another text.

  Cicada: I mean ex-boyfriend. I should fly you out here to Paris so we can be super single together. Lots of cute Spaniards out here. None have noticed me yet.

  Yup. She and Steph would get along great.

  “Not now, Steph.”

  “Yes, Kiera, now.”

  The horizon is melting into a warm brown, hinting at the impending orange glow of sunrise, and we drive past Jefferson, where there’s not a car in the parking lot. I imagine waking up in a few hours and going to school in a sling with my face all over the Internet. Everyone is going to recognize me now. Everyone will be asking questions. There might even be a news crew here waiting for me later this morning. We drive past a streetlight in our neighborhood that’s just shut itself off for the morning and pull into the driveway of our little gray house at the corner. We sit there in the car for a while in silence. I stare out the window at the shrubs in the front yard, feeling Steph’s eyes on me.

  “I know you really like Malcolm, okay? Maybe you even love him. But nobody treats people they love the way Malcolm treats you. And nobody treats their own people the way Malcolm does. He’s manipulative, he’s a liar, and he’s dangerous.”

  I rub my good hand against my leg to scrunch my sleeve over my knuckles so I can have something to wipe my tears with. I’m crying because I know she’s right. I’m crying because I want the old Malcolm back—the Malcolm only I get to see. The Malcolm who would hold me and stare at the sky with me. We had so many dreams for Atlanta. Now I don’t know how I can go to Spelman knowing he’s across the street.

  “What’s Malcolm’s Twitter handle?” she asks.

  “@xxPeaceMongerFOOxx,” I say absentmindedly. I don’t know why she’s asking. If she plans to send him a message, he’s never on Twitter. Better to text him.

  “Thought so,” she says. She tosses her phone into my lap, startling me, and I wince from the pain and give her the sourest glare I can.

  “Sorry,” she says. Then she nods at her phone. “Is this enough to convince you to dump his ass?”

  I look down at the phone to see another copy of my picture in a tweet from @xxPeaceMongerFOOxx with a caption that puts a lump in my throat.

  Meet #Emerald, the SLAY developer. Jamal Rice’s blood is on her hands. If u see her, avenge him. I kno I will. #AvengeJamal #LongLiveKing Jamal

  I reread that one part. I kno I will.

  Malcolm wouldn’t. Steph snatches her phone back, as if she knows what I’m thinking, and clicks a few buttons.

  “That’s a death threat, Kiera. I’m calling the police,” she says.

  “What?!” I scream, jerking my head a little too fast. I groan as stabbing pain begins to fade and the ache sets in, and I can’t wait to get in the house and find some painkillers. But I have to stop Steph from calling the cops.

  “You can’t do that, Steph,” I say. “I’m serious. This isn’t even about me and Malcolm. It’s about a Black man and the cops. Do you know what might happen if they show up at his house and arrest him? You can get him expelled, get him kicked out of the city, get a restraining order, but you will not make my boyfriend the next police brutality hashtag.”

  “Ex-boyfriend!” hollers Steph. “And I’ll make him the next hashtag before he makes you a hashtag. Believe me, after Tamir Rice was shot in the back by that cop in Cleveland, I swore on my life that I’d never call the cops on a Black man, because yes, we have to protect our own, and yes, we queens have to support our kings. But I’ll be dead before I let a Black man abuse my sister because I’m not allowed to call the cops on him.”

  “Steph, listen. Malcolm isn’t abusive. He’s confused—”

  “Nah, he’s bitter. And entitled. He’s so wrapped up in fighting ‘the white man’s agenda’ that he threatened your life on Twitter and tried to take over SLAY. That’s ironically the most white-boy troll shit I’ve ever seen!”

  “You still don’t get it,” I say, wincing against the sudden shooting pain in my shoulder. “If they show up and arrest him, if he’s lucky to live through getting arrested, and I press charges, he’s going to prison. White boys have committed literal murder and gotten community service. Black boys have been killed on sight for selling loose cigarettes. If Malcolm goes to jail, he might never come out.”

  “Kiera, I get it. But if you don’t press charges, he gets to walk around threatening you and whoever else as he pleases. I know it’s unfair, and I know he’s bound to get a raw deal, but there must be consequences, even in an unfair system.”

  “Steph,” I say. But what else can I say?

  She’s staring at me with tears in her eyes. I can’t look at her. My eyes are burning too. What am I so afraid of? Loneliness? Isolation? Pushing away the last remaining sliver of the person I was at Belmont? Why is this so hard?

  “He’s not unfixable.”

  “It’s not your job to fix him,” she says without hesitation.

  “You don’t know him like I know him.”

  “You thought you knew him,” she says. “The Malcolm you know doesn’t exist, Kiera.”

  I shut my eyes and breathe gingerly to avoid setting off my clavicle pain again. I downloaded a development engine, I created a character, a card game, a forum, an entire universe for people worldwide to communicate in secret and engage each other in epic duels, but I can’t tell one man that I’m sick of his games. I imagine Malcolm’s face. I can see him lying next to me on the trampoline in the backyard, smiling. His eyes are alight with something—hope? I think of a much smaller boy, curled up alone, nestled in a beanbag chair, controller in hand, three CPUs on the TV screen patiently waiting for their human companion to wake up from his nap. Lying next to him on the trampoline, looking into his eyes, all I saw was littler Malcolm, grateful for a friend.

  “I can’t do it, Steph,” I sob. I wipe away more tears and feel Steph’s hand on my knee, which makes me cry harder. Eventually I’m ugly crying right there in the car—not because I don’t want to leave Malcolm, but because I know that if I’m going to have any hope for a future, I have to. That future in Atlanta won’t happen. It was never meant to happen. Malcolm—the real Malcolm—is too bitter to allow a future like that to bloom into a forever love. He’s confused. He’s angry. And Steph’s right—he’s dangerous. After I spend the next twenty minutes staring at the bushes in the front yard, and blinking makes my eyes burn, and the tears have dried on my face, Steph moves her hand over my knee and says softly, “I’m going to make the call now.”

  And I let her.

  16. TWO-PLAYER GAME

  * * *

  Once I explain everything to Mom and Dad, they agree to let me stay home from school for the next week. The police process Steph’s report with screenshots of his threatening tweets and arrest Malcolm without incident, and even after everything he did to me, I’m glad he’s one of the lucky ones—he lives long enough to make it to jail. They issue a restraining order against him in my name, I block Malcolm’s number from all my apps, and I try to forget he ever existed, which, despite everything, is damn hard. I don’t think I’ll ever forget him. I think of him when I think of Spelman, or Morehouse, or Atlanta, and I realize I can’t go to any of those places if I’m going to ever truly let go of what I was so sure my future would look like. I don’t know where I’m going anymore, and that’s scary and freeing all at the same time.

  My mailbox has blown up. Not my inbox, although that maxed out last week at sixty-five thousand messages. My physical mailbox. The one at the end of our driveway. Packages, padded envelopes, cards, and letters, most of them from fellow SLAYers, have been flooding in. Mom freaked out. At first she only let me open the envelopes. Too many package bombs on the news lately, I guess. But after a while
she came around, and now I have a stack of SLAY-related items in the corner of my room—bobbleheads of me and Cicada, and a few of Hyacinth, scarves, buttons, patches, a jacket with SLAY written across the back in huge green letters with green LEDs underneath that twinkle like emeralds. And fan art. Endless fan art. The wall behind my bunk bed is almost full, and it’ll be time to move on to the wall behind my computer desk soon. Every night I get to go to bed with drawn, painted, and airbrushed images of Emerald, Cicada, and Hyacinth slinging cards. One girl from Kansas City—Jamal’s hometown—sent me a photo of her cosplaying as Zama, with dreadlocks, wolf cloak, bracelets, and all. Behind her, with a Guy Fawkes mask lifted off his face so I can see his features, is a boy who’s cosplaying as PrestoBox. In his letter, he told me his real name.

  Damar Rice.

  SLAY name: Osiris.

  Jamal’s brother.

  In his letter, he told me thank you, of all things.

  His exact words were: Jamal was always happiest when he was playing SLAY. I’d never seen him so proud of who he was, as he was in his last few months. Thank you, Emerald. From Osiris. Orisha Tribe forever.

  I keep that picture on the wall right next to my face, so I can look at it as I fall asleep.

  Since my picture went viral, Claire’s been sending me news clips of Dr. Abbott, Jan, and Derek from Channel 5 debating whether SLAY is a racist game, and over the course of several videos, they seem to reach a verdict. Since I’m only seventeen and still a child in their eyes, the American media seems to collectively decide that—although I’m perfectly capable of speaking up for myself—I can’t be self-aware enough yet to speak for my entire race, although in every video they consult Dr. Abbott like they expect him to. If Derek and Jan really want “the Black opinion” on something, they’re going to have to interview all one and a half million SLAYers—up a whole million in the last six weeks—one by one to get an aggregate answer. There’s no such thing as being “old enough” to know all of that.

  Claire and I have disabled SLAY coins for now. All items must be bartered until we can figure out how to prevent more Jeremiah Marshalls in the future.