But I can’t complain about the neighborhood. Bellevue, Washington, is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever seen, in real life or on TV. Perfectly manicured trees line every public sidewalk, like they do at Disneyland, and I haven’t seen a pothole since we moved here from SoDo—that’s “south downtown”—three years ago, when Dad got promoted. Lucky for me, it happened shortly after Malcolm got expelled, and I got to follow him out here to Jefferson, which I love and hate. I love that I can charge these kids sixty dollars a session to tutor them in math. It’s a nice addition to my résumé, and it gives me extra cash to spend on RAM, server maintenance, and in-game artwork. But I hate, and I mean hate, being “the voice of Blackness” here. At Belmont, where 50 percent of the students are Black, and 70 percent are people of color, Malcolm and I got to be normal. Nobody was asking to touch my twist-out, nobody was asking him about his locs, and nobody was asking us for permission to appropriate Black culture as if we’re the authority for our entire race.
I take in the fresh air. It’s only Thursday, and if I’m going to get through the rest of this week, the rest of this semester, and graduate, I’m going to have to stay calm and focus on my homework. I’ll be out of here, and hopefully into Spelman, soon enough.
I reach our little gray house at the end of the cul-de-sac that caps Newberg Lane. It’s smaller than most of the houses on this street, but it still doesn’t feel like home. Not like our home in SoDo anyway. This new house has two obnoxious white pillars on either side of the front door, and a wreath, and a peephole.
I notice a new decoration on the porch—a stuffed rabbit doll made of pink tube socks, sticks, and various brightly colored plastic eggs. That wasn’t here when I left for school this morning. Mom is clearly home early, and in a decorating mood, which means she’s going to ask me for help. Good thing I didn’t invite Malcolm over.
I mentally prepare myself for the encounter, since I have to get through it quick. Then I pull my keys out of my backpack’s water bottle compartment, unlock the front door, and swing it open.
“Mom?” I ask.
“We’re in the dining room!” I hear Steph from the other side of the house, since she had a five-minute head start on me. A much quieter voice mumbles something, and I assume it’s Mom reminding Steph not to yell in the house, even though no one’s home but the three of us.
I carefully untie my shoes and carry them with me into the kitchen, where I keep my shoe toothbrush in the pen drawer, so nobody will confuse it for a mouth toothbrush. I don’t know why I’m so particular about keeping my white shoes white. They’re just Keds. Not like they’re a pair of two-hundred-dollar Yeezys a lot of other Jefferson kids have. But it still irks me when they get dirty.
I find Mom and Steph sitting at the dining table, which always has eight place mats and a seasonal centerpiece, just in case Mom ever wants to throw a spontaneous dinner party. Although with her new schedule at the dental clinic, I doubt she’ll ever really have time. She and Steph are hard at work poking pink and yellow plastic gerbera stems into a horn-shaped white basket in the center of the table and eating popcorn.
“Hey!” exclaims Steph. She looks up at me through new red glasses—apparently, she’s already bored of the green ones she was wearing earlier. These ones are as big around as baseballs, with the lenses punched out. Mine are boring black frames, with prescription lenses. Simple.
“Hey.” Mom smiles up at me.
“You’re home early,” I say.
“I finished with my last patient and they told me they were okay for the rest of the day, probably because of that billboard we put up last year reminding people to brush twice a day. I told y’all it was a good idea,” says Mom, tossing a few kernels of popcorn into her mouth.
“Haven’t you also been telling people to avoid hard candy, caramel, and popcorn?” Steph asks, reaching for another handful and widening her eyes and smiling playfully across the table.
“I know optometrists who stare at their cell phones all day, and I know doctors who eat peach cobbler,” says Mom with a grin, sliding the bowl closer to herself and grabbing a huge handful. She shrugs and looks up at me.
“Sit down with us and have some, Kiera. We’re decorating, if you want to join us.” Mom pulls out the empty chair between them at the head of the table.
“No thanks,” I say as politely as I can. “I have homework. Steph, I thought you were coming home early to work on posters.”
Steph wrinkles her nose playfully at me and glances at Mom.
“I can’t have a snack first?” she asks, and shoves another handful of popcorn into her mouth.
She’s staring at me with one eye narrowed, which means she’s analyzing me. It’s like she can see exactly what I’m thinking. Since I’m the worst at maintaining a poker face, I reach for the bowl of popcorn and toss a few kernels into my mouth. They’re buttery and salty, and I think Mom used some of that cheese powder her assistant, Karen, got us for Christmas last year. But Steph isn’t letting me off that easy. She’s still staring at me.
“Why do you ask?” she pries.
“No reason,” I say, just as my phone buzzes with a text.
“You expecting someone? Maybe a certain someone? A certain Hotep whose name I won’t mention?”
She calls Malcolm a Hotep, which, in her mind, is a brotha who claims he’s for Black power, when he’s really for Black male power, homophobia, misogyny, and other regressive ideologies. I say as long as Malcolm is encouraging our people to do better, and me to do better, I can’t complain, even if he says a few off-color things every so often. He may not “get” feminism all the way yet, but he’s a work in progress.
I deflect her question. “Jealousy ain’t cute, Steph.”
“Don’t say ain’t in my house,” says Mom with raised brows.
I made “Ain’t” a card in the game, since Ebonics is part of what differentiates the American Black experience from American “other” experiences. It’s ours. And I’ll use the word “ain’t” however I please as soon as I log in.
But my mom’s raised eyebrows ain’t playing. “Boo-Boo the Fool” is another card in the game. It’s a Battle card, since “Do I look like Boo-Boo the Fool?” is a rhetorical question that essentially translates to “I wasn’t born yesterday.” It’s a challenge to say something else and see what happens, and so are raised eyebrows, which is why the card features an artistic rendition of my mom’s. But as long as my mom still feels the need to “correct” Ebonics, like when we say words like “ain’t,” she’ll never see the card, or the game. She’d just be disappointed.
It’s not that I don’t get why she does it. She doesn’t want us to walk into a job interview one day with “Ay, bruh, I ain’t got much ’sperience, but I’ma do what I gotta do to get the job done, you feel me, cuz?” but Steph and I know how to alternate. It’s like speaking two different languages. One when I’m home, FaceTiming Malcolm, and one when I’m at Jefferson, blending in. I can do both flawlessly. But some nagging fear in the back of my mom’s mind thinks that if she doesn’t snuff out every “finna” and “talmbout” and “I’on,” Steph and I will be forever unemployable, and every dime she’s spent at Jefferson will go down the drain.
“Yes, Mom,” I say, pulling my phone out and stealing a glance at the screen. A new text from Malcolm.
Malcolm: See you tomorrow. Until then, listen to this and miss me.
He attached a new song by the Weeknd—that one that was nice and slow that I suggested we make love to. Why does he insist on teasing me like this when he knows he can’t come over tonight? I let out a frustrated sigh and look back up at Mom and Steph.
Steph is looking at me with a smirk now, and I’m sure she knows it’s Malcolm. She changes the subject, and I’m grateful, but the new topic she chooses is one I’ve heard a thousand times.
“Did you notice my new glasses?”
I nod. “Red looks nice on you.”
“Thanks!” she beams, rolling up both sleeves of her
tight pink sweater.
Mom leans in closer to Steph, examining her glasses extra close, so close that Steph actually leans backward a bit.
“Is that . . . Scotch tape?” asks Mom.
“They’re from Goodwill,” explains Steph with a shrug as she picks up a big green leaf and nestles it in the basket. “But they broke in my purse on the way home. Had to fix ’em somehow.”
“You couldn’t find another pair of red glasses?” asks Mom.
“Not ones that look like the ones from Rihanna’s music video. I may go to Jefferson, but I’m not about to spend Jefferson money on glasses.”
I smile at that. Steph and I have our frugality in common, although mine is mostly based on the fact that I use every last dime I can find to maintain the game.
“But Scotch tape, Steph? Really,” says Mom. “You could find a nice new pair on Amazon that doesn’t look so . . .”
Steph leans back against her chair and folds her arms over her chest, challenging Mom to finish the sentence.
“Tacky,” says Mom. I know she’s avoiding the word “ghetto,” after Steph’s lecture to the family last week about how “ghetto” is just a derogatory code word for innovative. “I just don’t want those kids at Jefferson ostracizing you and your sister.”
Too late for that.
“I get it, Mom,” replies Steph. “But I genuinely don’t care. If I wear red tape-covered glasses, quote lyrics from The Chronic regularly, and speak in AAVE, and that’s enough to get me ostracized, it’s going to happen no matter what I do.”
Okay, I have to ask. “What’s AAVE?”
“Oh, please don’t get her started,” sighs Mom, looking up at me like I just asked Steph to recite the Gettysburg Address for us.
“No, Mom, this is important. Kiera needs to hear this. It stands for African American Vernacular English, and—”
“Actually,” I say, glancing back at my phone. It’s already 3:08. I have seven minutes to log in. “Sorry I asked. I need to get to studying. Biology exam tomorrow.”
I turn to leave through the kitchen just as Steph launches into, “Okay, we’ll talk later, though, right? This is important!” at a thousand decibels, after which comes a swift shhhhhhh from Mom to remind her not to yell in the house.
When I get to my room, I lock the door and run to my computer chair. When I log in, there are 641 new DMs in my SLAY inbox. That’s the name of the game—SLAY. It’s not an acronym, although that’s always the first question of anyone who joins, and people have been offering suggestions for acronyms ever since its launch. It’s a double entendre, meaning both “to greatly impress” and “to annihilate.” I thought the name was more than appropriate for a turn-based VR card game where players go head-to-head in card duels using elements of Black culture. Steph would love it if she ever knew about it. Or if she knew I was the developer. But for all the confidence I have in my sister, one thing she absolutely can’t do is keep a secret. And on top of that, her constant jabs at Malcolm make me wonder if she’d get the game. There are players from all over the world, all walks of life, many who grew up poor like Malcolm, regularly “decolonize” like Malcolm, and surround themselves with specific kinds of Black influences, like Malcolm. I don’t know if I can share SLAY with her, because I don’t know if she’ll accept it— all of it. Not without overthinking it. So I won’t. Probably not ever.
I scan the messages for anything important, like major game glitches. I don’t want people to miss the semifinals because of technical problems. Most of them are asking what time the duel begins, even though I put a section clearly marked Duel Calendar in the navigation panel on the left side of the screen, the panel that you have to look at whenever you’re configuring your character.
I roll my eyes at the willful ignorance and glance at the clock. Five minutes till duel. I’ll read the rest of the messages later. I unlock the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out my headphones, and the gray VR socks, gloves, and goggles my family doesn’t know I bought.
My heart pounds as I slip them on. I can’t wait until I go off to Spelman so I can play with a noise-canceling headset. For now, I have to listen for my mom yelling through the door that it’s dinnertime, so I can say five more minutes and deflect suspicion.
I log in and my pulse races as I watch my logo appear in brilliant green all caps against a black background. SLAY, it says on the screen inside my goggles.
I get up and stand in the middle of my room so I don’t knock anything over. All I keep in my room are my bunk bed with the sofa on the bottom, my bookcase, my dresser, my pouf, my desk in the corner by the door. When it comes to VR, the less furniture around me, the safer. Come on, come on, I urge as the map fills the screen. It’s nighttime in this region—the Tundra—so the navy skybox is up, almost black, peppered with shimmering stars. I look up and around at them all, and suddenly I miss all those summer nights Malcolm and I used to lie in my backyard in SoDo and watch what little of the night sky the city smog would leave us. Nights when we got to shut out the rest of the world and just be ourselves, swapping music, talking about which Black genius’s opinions he was reading that day. I captured several of his favorites in SLAY—Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes.
I left my character, Emerald, here in the Tundra so it would be easier to get to the duel. The snowy mountains contrast nicely against the sky, spiking upward in a basin all around me. I raise my hand to slide the virtual keyboard from the right side of the screen, type Fairbanks Arena using the holographic keys, point my left hand to the north, and pull my trigger finger, allowing me to teleport at light speed. New players might think I named the arena after Fairbanks, Alaska, but the information panel would tell them I actually named it after Mabel Fairbanks, one of the first Black professional figure skaters.
Mountains zoom past me. I smile, impressed at how good they look up close. I was having a fantastic day when I created the Tundra. The textures are flawless—smooth and realistic. The snow looks fluffy up close. Every mountain looks hand-painted, thanks to donated art from a few indie artists who SLAY. I built the arena itself entirely of diamonds, because I could, and because a diamond arena in an icy region is hella dope. It’s one of the biggest, too. It can hold three million people, since I hope one day the game gets that big.
For now, chat reads over a hundred thousand logged-in people out of the five hundred thousand people with SLAY accounts, which is still a lot for a single duel, even if it’s the semifinal round of a tournament, but I guess it’s prime time for people my age to be online, at least here on the West Coast. I’m close enough to see the people forming a line into the arena now. I slow my pace and I’m flying smoothly over all the attendees. Most players choose to be either royalty or characters with special powers or weapons. I descend to the ground and join them, walking in place in my room to make Emerald move.
A few people recognize me and step aside.
“It’s Queen Emerald!” says the text over the head of an especially tall woman in a bloodred strapless gown with a fifty-foot train flowing behind her. Her wrists have golden bracelets up to her elbows, and her neck has similar ones. Her hair is twisted up into an enormous bulb on top of her head, with a huge golden crown encircling it, a giant ruby as wide as her torso set right in the middle.
At first I tried to make the dresses realistic and material, but it was causing problems when people would step on the trains, veils, and robes, and keep characters from walking smoothly. So she’s wearing a dress that’s immaterial, meaning the fabric will go right through other players and objects without obstruction, a weird concept—based on collision physics—to think about when you’re talking to her face-to-face.
A woman in bone armor notices me and takes a fighting stance. Her unnaturally large boobs and red headband around her enormous Afro make her look like a Mortal Kombat character.
Text appears above her head. “I hope you got my message, Emerald. We meet at dawn.”
Everyone says, “We meet at daw
n.” It’s how we say, “I challenge you to a duel at a later time.” In fact, it’s become an identifier in the real world. About a year ago, kids in the grocery store started coming up to me and asking, “Did you thaw the meat?” or “Did you get the meat?” or “Do you eat meat?” and after some perusing in chat, I realized it’s a coded question. They ask pretty much any question involving meat, to which I’m supposed to reply, “We meet at dawn” if I want them to know I SLAY.
When Reddit first launched, it was so secretive that Redditors in real life used to ask the highly conspicuous question “When does the narwhal bacon?” but I like our version better. It’s more covert. “Did you thaw the meat?” is a totally normal question to ask. “When does the narwhal bacon?” will make people ask, “WTF are you Internet kids up to?” which is exactly what I don’t want to happen. I know there are SLAYers who are just like me—who live one way during the day at work or school, and would rather their nonBlack classmates or coworkers not know they live completely differently online. Completely authentically.
I walk past the woman in bone armor and spot a character in a dark gray hooded robe that extends about thirty feet behind him. He’s wielding a katana in each hand and has the words JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON written across the back of his robe in bloodred. Not going to lie, his outfit is pretty legit. When text on clothing was enabled, I just wrote EMERALD down the leg of a lime-green jumpsuit I had stuffed in the back of my inventory. The text was impossible to line up with various articles of clothing, so I ended up giving up on the function, and now I’m wishing I’d written something meaningful instead of my name, because it’ll be awhile before I’ll have time to sort that feature out.
The entrance to Fairbanks Arena is everything I’d imagined a Hollywood movie premiere to be. Neon-blue and purple strobe lights are creating a faux aurora borealis across the night sky and across all sides of the building. At least I hope people recognize it’s the aurora. It looks a little like a sloppy watercolor potion, which I guess is okay since this region is full of witches and magicians. It’s much easier to mix potions when you live right next to the mines, where the crystals are—in yellow, blue, and pink.
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