SLAY

by Brittney Morris

  The pilot announces that we’re beginning our descent and that we should be landing at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in twenty minutes. Steph is sitting next to me in the window seat with the sun beaming down on her face. I don’t know how she can sleep when it’s so damn bright outside, but I figure I’ll give her another ten minutes before I wake her up. On our family trip to Orlando last summer, turbulence woke me up during the landing, and I’ll never forget the terror that went through my mind. I thought I was falling out of the plane. I look out the window and smile, thinking about how silly it seems now. We’re still above the clouds, and the skies are the clearest blue. The ride is smooth.

  I quickly ran out of programs I liked on the in-flight TV, so I slipped my phone into a ziplock bag and hung it from the tray table mechanism in case I want to watch some video game walk-through videos on it without holding it in my lap, although right now I’m just playing some Kendrick Lamar and thinking.

  Claire and I had a long talk Thursday night while I did laundry and finished packing for the trip. She reminded me that Jamal had someone in his life who was willing to murder him for something as arbitrary as unredeemable video game currency, so whether or not SLAY existed, he was in danger of getting killed. If it hadn’t been SLAY coins, it would’ve been something else.

  I remember the boy in the photo—the one holding the Ping-Pong paddle. He should have had a chance to grow up. He should have had a chance to be excellent, whatever that would’ve looked like for him. He should at least be remembered as a SLAY hero, but I can’t think of what to do to remember him—a statue seems so . . . ordinary. Eventually, statues fade in with the rest of the scenery, and as people forget the circumstances of the tragedy, statues become occupiers of real estate that should be torn down to make way for more important, more relevant things.

  What can I make for him that will live on and on for as long as the game exists?

  Then it hits me. A card! A card would never fade. It would never get old, and it would pop up every once in a while and remind everyone in the arena of the tragedy that befell one of our own. The Anubis card. Anubis, the Egyptian god known for embalming the dead, the god of mummification. The Anubis card could tie the opponent up in a mummy wrap, rendering them immobile for a given time, maybe five seconds.

  It’s perfect. I can’t wait to talk to Claire about it in just a few minutes.

  Steph yawns loud enough for me to hear her over Kendrick, and I pull out my earbuds and shush her.

  “Act like you’ve flown before,” I scold.

  “You should talk,” she says with a smile, pointing to my phone hanging in front of me. “Most ridiculous thing I ever did see.”

  I consider her choice of word: “ridiculous.”

  “You mean innovative,” I say, “or do you mean ‘ridiculous’ as in ‘ghetto’?”

  “Why do you sound like a more awake version of me?” she asks. “You know I didn’t mean ‘ridiculous’ in a bad way. It’s just . . . creative.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I know Steph didn’t mean it, but other Black people do all the time. Making do with what you have and finding creative solutions to problems big and small are marks of the Black community, and we can’t only celebrate Black excellence when we succeed in “acceptable” ways. Malcolm was about that respectability politics—that BS about some Black people being worthier of respect than others based on education, occupation, or intellectualism. I say it’s Black elitism. In history class I once read an essay by Du Bois in a book called The Negro Problem in which he uses the term “the talented tenth” to describe the likelihood that only one in ten Black men—he doesn’t mention women—will be equipped to lead the Black community to social progress, and that he will be equipped to do so through pursuing a classical education, reading and writing books, and engaging in politics.

  But Du Bois lived before the age of the Internet. He lived before the age of worldwide social media platforms, YouTube, video games, Etsy, and viral photos, and I say we let go of this idea that only a tenth of us can “lead” or be “successful.” If we in the Black community are thriving, surviving, learning, and living our best lives, we are all in the talented tenth. For all of Du Bois’s education, he couldn’t see our potential—not like I can. If he could have seen the majesty I see in SLAY every day, he might have thought differently.

  Ding! The seatbelt sign lights up above me, and I look at Steph and smile. She’s already checking her phone to see if the data is back on. She’ll do great things one day. Hell, she’s already doing great things with me on this game! I don’t know if either of us will go to college right away, and for the first time ever, I’m okay with that. All I know right now is that she and I wrote twenty new cards together last week, and I’ve got ideas for dozens more. And I know that I want to figure out this in-game currency situation with Claire. And that I want to add more regions—maybe a sky region, or even one in space. Maybe an underground arena?

  Guess I know more than I thought I did about what I want.

  The plane lands without incident, and I pull my backpack out of the overhead bin. Steph struggles with her handbag and backpack, and we head to the baggage claim to find her two suitcases. Two. Who brings two suitcases on a weekend trip to Paris?

  “I can’t just fly to the City of Love without taking everything I love with me,” she’d said.

  So I help her pull the bags off the conveyor belt. I’m looking around for Claire, and there’s a nervous lump in my throat I’m having trouble swallowing. Why am I so nervous? My phone lights up.

  Cicada: I see you!

  I look up and around, but I don’t see her. There’s a mix of people everywhere, since everyone likes to fly on the weekend. A man grazes my arm and some of his coffee splashes out of his to-go cup, and he glances over his shoulder that’s not occupied by a cell phone and yells, “Excusez-moi!” in my direction, which I know means “sorry.”

  Steph knows some French, since she’s known about this trip for weeks, and she yells back in the most American accent ever, “Ça va!”

  I hope she and Claire don’t mind helping me out with the translation issues we’re bound to encounter. I was shocked when Claire told me that she was actually born right here in Paris and has lived here her whole life. When you think of Paris, you think of skinny white women casually sipping tea and eating croissants in a cafe. You don’t think of bald Black girls in Converse, ripped jeans, a Dave Chappelle shirt, and round glasses, but that’s exactly what I see walking toward me and Steph.

  While Steph is fumbling with her bag, I nudge her and she sees what I see. Claire is even more beautiful than I imagined. Her eyes are huge, her lips are bright red, and her smile lights up the whole terminal. Steph and I forget where we are—or rather, we just don’t care. We run to her, pulling her into a hug so huge and loud and full of laughter, I’m sure people are looking at us. We’re all squealing, and soon, we’re all jumping up and down in a big ball of Black girl magic.

  When I shared Emerald with the world that day I opened up the forum on that slow-ass server, I never imagined I’d end up here, in Paris, with two like-minded women who SLAY. And there, in the middle of the Charles de Gaulle Airport, I sink into a flawless nay-nay and offer a silent thank you up to my ancestors, or karma, or whatever.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  For me, SLAY has been a journey of self-discovery. In creating Kiera, I was forced to reconcile my experiences as a Black girl, now a woman, with what the world tells me Blackness is. Everyone has an opinion about how we as Black people should act and which of our accomplishments deserve respect. Writing SLAY taught me that the magic of Blackness is what we make it, that we define our future, and that we as a people deserve all the greatness our ancestors imagined for us.

  I have to start my thank-yous with the man whose undying love and support got me through so many moments when I doubted everything: my husband, (the handsomest man in Seattle) Steven Morris. Thank you for having
kind words for me even when I have none for myself. I love you more every day.

  To my agents, Quressa Robinson and Kristin Nelson, I can’t thank you enough for believing in me, and in SLAY. You’ve made my wildest dreams come true. And to my editor, Jen Ung, whose literary genius (and copious doggo pictures) helped me polish SLAY into exactly what it was meant to be. Thank you for constantly building me up and making me a better writer with each draft (and for making it fun along the way!).

  To my beta readers, Jackie Mak, Monica Gribouski, Becca Baker, and Alexandra Keister, thank you for reading my words at their rawest, and for giving the most honest, constructive criticism I could imagine. You da real MVPs.

  Thank you to my grandma Vivian “Rappin’ Granny” Smallwood, my great-grandmother Edith Lewis, and my great-great-grandmother Katie Thompson, the original queens, who truly exemplified what it means to be royalty. To my mom and dad, who, despite the ups and downs, always believed in me. Thank you for buying me and Jerome our first gaming console and letting me explore being the master of my own character. (I still play that GameCube today.) And to my siblings, John, Derrick, Tiffany, and Jerome, and their families, thank you for your endless love, support, and encouragement.

  To my friends, whose unconditional love got me through various stages of life: Becca Baker, Chris Mikkelson, Aaron Oaks, James Stoner, Grayson Toliver, Almendra Lopez, Dreeny Paine, Sydney Clark, Ari Bloom, Amber Inoue, Artemis Finch, Tiana Sherman, Caitlin Gunn, Casey Higgins, Brett Huggins, Chelsea Williams, Sauni Govere, Alex Govere, Alex Snell, Matthias Kriegel, Annastasia Nuñez, Brittany Nuñez, Ari Nuñez, Tara Krishnan, Alise Fleming, and Vaidyanathan Seshan.

  To my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Jasperson, who read chapter one of my first attempt at a novel aloud to the class as proudly as if it were a classic, and sparked in me a love of connecting with readers. Thank you.

  To the girls in STEM, don’t let anybody tell you what you can’t do, where you can’t go, or who you can’t be. To the Black gamers out there hungry for more heroes who look like us, I wrote this for you. #SLAY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  * * *

  Brittney Morris is the author of SLAY. She is also the founder and former president of the Boston University Creative Writing Club. She holds a BA in economics. Brittney spends her spare time playing video games, slaying at DDR, and enjoying the Seattle rain from her apartment. She lives with her husband, Steven, who would rather enjoy the rain from a campsite in the woods because he hasn’t played enough horror games. You can find her online at AuthorBrittneyMorris.com and on Twitter and Instagram @BrittneyMMorris.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

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  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition September 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Brittney Morris

  Jacket photographs of girl copyright © 2019 by Kiuikson and Tara Moore/Getty Images

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  Author photograph copyright © 2019 by Kariba Photography

  Interior emoji illustrations by RaulAlmu/iStock

  Interior fist illustrations by Kirill Veretennikov/iStock

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  Jacket designed by Laura Eckes

  Interior designed by Mike Rosamilia

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Morris, Brittney, author.

  Title: Slay / by Brittney Morris.

  Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2019. | Summary: An honors student at Jefferson Academy, seventeen-year-old Kiera enjoys developing and playing SLAY, a secret, multiplayer online role-playing game celebrating Black culture, until the two worlds collide.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018052663 | ISBN 9781534445420 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Video games—Fiction. | Fantasy games—Fiction. | Role playing—Fiction. | African Americans—Fiction. |

  Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M6727 Sl 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052663

  ISBN 9781534445444 (eBook)