Presto leaps through Zama’s hair tentacles and engulfs her in that inky black cloak until both duelers are a tangle of hair, wolf pelt, and shadowy blackness under a purple haze. I can barely make out anything through all that, so I watch the Megaboard as Presto’s points tick up and up and up. Three hundred, four hundred, five fifty, six fifty. It’s thirteen hundred to eight hundred as Zama breaks free and sics her hair on PrestoBox again. Presto reverts to shadow form, sinking into the floor until they’re a pool of black zipping all over the ring. Zama’s eyes can’t keep up, and she looks ridiculous tap-dancing around in her regal wolf cloak to keep her feet away from the shadow.
I can’t help it—I burst into laughter.
My mom’s voice comes instantly.
“Honey, I hope you’re studying in there,” she calls.
“Yeah,” I holler, probably a little too fast. “I’m just taking a quick break.”
“Well, dinner’s almost ready anyway. You can take a break with us.”
“Is Dad home already?” I exclaim. It can’t be. It’s only—
I glance at the clock in the corner of my navigation panel. 3:45. What in the world is Dad doing home so early on a random Thursday?! Why, of all days, did both my parents decide to show up early from work today? I’m only halfway through round one of the Tundra Semifinals. I can’t just leave!
PrestoBox is flipping Zama over their shoulder now and slamming her flat on the ground. It’s time for me to chime in again. I begin typing and talking at the same time, which is always dangerous. I type: “A spectacular move by PrestoBox! What a show!” at the same time as I say, “Fine, just let me finish this show,” instead of what I meant to say: Fine, just let me finish this assignment. I scramble to correct myself. “I’m writing a report on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and its impact on Black culture in the nineties. I’m kind of in the middle of a train of thought here.”
“Yes, well, you won’t be able to think if you don’t get some nourishment,” calls Mom.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say begrudgingly, knowing a fight with my mom over dinner will not end in my favor. I listen to the ensuing silence until I’m sure she’s gone, and then I focus back in on the match. Zama is swinging her staff, knocking away sickle-shaped darts flying out from under PrestoBox’s cloak. We’re nearing the end of round one, and the Megaboard reads 1500−1300, with Zama in the lead. It’s so close, but there’s no way I’ll make it through to the end of round three without Mom pounding angrily at my door with the news that dinner is getting cold.
I call in the only reinforcement I can count on: Cicada.
I slide my chat panel out on my VR screen and open a private convo with her, relieved to find her name lit up in green.
Me: Please tell me you’re watching this.
Cicada: Zama and Presto? It’s past midnight here and I have a final exam tomorrow. In other words, wouldn’t miss it. :)
I smile. I don’t know where Cicada lives, but she’s somewhere in the Central European Time Zone, putting her somewhere south of Norway and north of Nigeria, which doesn’t narrow it down much. I don’t know a lot about her, really, since most of our conversations are strictly business—related to game updates, new cards, landscape artwork, or server maintenance—but I know that I can trust her. She’s been on this SLAY train since the beginning, faithfully moderating matches when I can’t, and it works, since she’s somewhere on the other side of the world. She’s awake when I’m not.
I type a reply into our private chat box.
Me: Thank God. Listen, it’s dinnertime and if I don’t get out there soon, my mom is going to have a liter of kittens.
Cicada: Spell-check? Or did your mom take “Kittens in a Blender” too literally?
I manage to contain a laugh and send a crying laughing emoji right back, and a grateful IOU a major one.
Then I navigate back to my announcement panel and type to the masses just as Zama reciprocates PrestoBox’s earlier body slam.
“Attention, lovely kings and queens, I leave you in the capable hands of Cicada. Be conscious, and be well.”
I don’t want to log off. The score is tied 1700−1700, and Zama’s hair is weakening its grip from around Presto’s amorphous form. The purple haze is fading. Round one is ending in a tie. The crowd is roaring as the imminence of round two sinks in. I see Cicada’s name light up in the stands on the opposite side of the arena, and freestanding, glowing white text appears above her bald head in a floating holographic speech bubble. It says “What a maneuver! Moves like that only come from the Tundra, am I right, kings and queens?”
I love her gown. It’s all white, off shoulder with white fur lining the neckline. A single strip of black fur lines the hood, which is pulled elegantly over her head. Her face is actually devoid of makeup. She just has the base-model face. But sometimes, if she’s feeling spunky, she’ll don the Princess Mononoke mask—the red and white one with the brown eyes. So badass. She’s sitting in the stands, so I can only see her from the torso up, but I’ve seen the gown in all its glory before. She looks like an ice princess. I wonder if she’s bald in real life too.
“Kiera!”
The yell makes me jump, and I scramble to log out, kill the power, yank off my headphones, headset, and gloves, hop across my carpet as I pull off one sock at a time, and get all my equipment back into the drawer before the knocking starts.
“Hold on!” I holler. I try to keep my keys as quiet as possible while I lock the bottom drawer.
“Dinner is getting cold!”
“I know, just—” I’m trying to catch my breath after being startled, so I don’t emerge from my room a raging ball of nerves. I’m already sweaty from the excitement of the match. I don’t want to look like I’ve just run a marathon while I’m supposed to be watching Fresh Prince.
“Just, get started without me. I’ll be out in five.”
“If you think you’re going to leave your father and me to listen to this rant about African American Vernacular English by ourselves, you’ve got another think coming.”
I smile and shake my head, wiping the sweat from my forehead and turning off my computer. As I open my door and follow Mom down the hall toward the dining room, I wonder which cards Zama and Presto will be using in round two.
2. AHEAD OF THE GAME
* * *
I stack three more peas onto my fork and try not to imagine what other incredible tricks PrestoBox has up their sleeve.
Steph is talking at us again, this time recalling a debate she had with Holly Little, the treasurer of Beta Beta, about Martin Luther King. I love my little sister, I really do, but she could talk about Dr. King for hours if we let her. Literally hours. There are few things I’d like less than to listen to that right now.
“And so then,” Steph says around a mouthful of rice, “I asked Holly if she’d ever actually read anything by MLK, like really read it, because if she had read MLK, she’d know he wasn’t the patron saint of complacency like she was insinuating, and that he made it clear that there’s a time and a place for revolt. So then Holly asked me if I was advocating for the destruction of infrastructure—you know, like when Black people loot stores after an unarmed Black person is killed and their killer is acquitted, and do you know what I asked her?”
Before any of us has a chance to guess, she’s answering her own question.
“I asked her if she thinks it’s worse than when white people loot stores after their team loses a big game.”
Steph throws her hands up as if she’s inviting the rest of us to test her.
“Boom,” she says, picking up the spoon.
I eat my peas and cut into my chicken with the edge of my fork. It’s tender and melts right off the bone, and when I put it in my mouth, it’s salty and buttery. My mom has managed to redefine the concept of baked poultry, and one day I hope to learn how she does it. Auntie Tina can do it too. Granny could make it. In fact, I’m sitting here realizing that every woman in my family knows how to make this chi
cken but me, and I’m hoping it’s genetic and one day I’ll just know how to make it. I’ve considered adding some kind of chicken-related SLAY card to the game, maybe as a Hex card, because I swear it’s like a drug. But people would riot. I can hear them now:
Chicken isn’t necessarily a Black thing!
Some of us are vegetarian!
All this talk of Black excellence, and you reduce us to a chicken trope!
I take another bite of chicken and realize Steph is talking about Beta Beta now.
“New member initiation is next week, and I’m so excited. There’s a sista joining us. I don’t know much about her, but her name is Jazmin, and I know we’re going to be best friends because she loves A Million Ways like I do, and she knows all the members and all their choreography. I know that much from Holly—”
“The same Holly that you had to set straight about Dr. King?” asks Dad. “If she’s confused about Dr. King, how can you trust the rest of her sources?”
He somehow finds a way to get his opinion in with Steph when Mom and I fail to, which I always find impressive. He’s an analyst at Gutenberg Enterprises, one of the largest paper manufacturing plants in the continental US, and I can’t imagine what he’s paid to do as an analyst except analyze things to death all day. Maybe that’s why he gets along so well with Steph.
“I mean . . . ,” says Steph, looking at the ceiling with both palms up, as she always does when she’s thinking too hard about something, “she already, like, knows Jazmin, so I trust her. And I know Holly. She wouldn’t lie about A Million Ways.”
I look at Dad now, sitting at the head of the table, his hazel eyes looking at Steph through windshield-size glasses, thinking.
“That’s a valid assessment,” he finally admits. He takes another bite. His salt-and-pepper mustache swishes side to side as he chews, and he shakes his head.
“Mm-mm-mm,” he marvels. “Are y’all eating the same chicken I am? Is nobody going to thank your mother for this gift from the cornucopia of Demeter?”
“Thanks, Mom,” I laugh. Steph nods and covers her mouth to say politely, “Thanks, Mom. This is really good.”
Dad knows how to get a smile out of me, Steph, and Mom, whose face is glowing now.
“Oh, it’s just a li’l salt.” She shrugs humbly, her eyes cast down to her plate as she slides her knife through the middle of the chicken like butter. “Li’l mayonnaise.”
“If you gave me salt, mayonnaise, and chicken, I wouldn’t bring back something like this,” Dad says with a smile. He shakes his head and does that thing where he looks like he’s wincing in pain and then he jerks his head in a weird way and lets out a “WHOO-WEE!” like it’s just so good he can’t physically contain himself. Corny. But it gets Mom going.
“Stop it, Charles,” she says, grinning. He wiggles his shoulders and cuts another piece.
“Can’t wait to see what’s for dessert,” he says. I almost spit out my chicken with laughter. Steph looks at me wide-eyed and erupts in giggles. Mom’s eyebrows are at work again, rising up as if to say, I taught you better than this, but she’s also struggling to stifle a laugh as she changes the subject.
“So, Kiera,” she says, and then pauses as if she’s forgotten something. “Actually, hold on a minute.”
She slides her chair back from the table with half her food left on her plate, which is unheard of in this house. Nobody leaves the table until their plate is clean. That’s the rule. That’s always been the rule. What is going on?
I look to Dad for answers, but he’s taking advantage of the fact that Mom’s out of the room to check his phone at the table, which is also strictly prohibited. Steph is following suit with that hot-pink cat phone case of hers with the round baby blue Care Bear dangling off the end. I still haven’t figured out what that’s for. I suddenly remember the text I got earlier that I forgot to check. It’s hard to remember to text real-life people back when there’s a world of dueling magical beings in your room. I unlock my phone and realize the text is a mile long. Of course it is. It’s from Harper.
Harper: Hey . Mind helping me with polynomials? Even my app isn’t picking it up . I even asked Wyatt 4 help, and u know how desperate I have 2 be 2 do that, but he wouldn’t even look at it!!!! He says he’s “too busy” playing Legacy of Planets!!! Like WTF dude???!
Outside of tutoring lessons, Harper is always asking me for math help. Not because she can’t understand it, but because she doesn’t take the time to hash it out. When we studied trig last quarter, I refused to help her with the first problem of any of the sections until she’d sat there looking at it for at least two minutes, which didn’t really work because she always whipped out her math app well before the two-minute mark. Everyone uses the Mathdeco app, and the website version of the app for homework, and I’m pretty sure the teachers have figured that out, because you can’t use either of those on the tests, and this year the tests are worth 100 percent of our grade, and the homework is worth zilch.
I manage to send off a single unpunctuated text before I hear Mom’s shoes coming back down the hall toward the dining room.
Me: Sorry YES I’ll help u later g2g
I should have thrown in a heart emoji to cushion how short the text was. Harper loves emojis, and I mean she really can’t get enough of them. Last Halloween she wanted me to be a heart eyes emoji, while she was the crying laughing emoji. She asked Malcolm to join us, but he said he’d only do it if he got to be the eggplant emoji, which I thought was funny. Harper called the whole thing off at the very suggestion.
I can hear Mom from the hall.
“Kiera, I’m sure you’ve been wondering all evening why we’re all home early.” She comes back into the room, still wearing her blue scrubs, holding a huge blue-and-white envelope against her chest like it’s a newborn baby. I look at her face, at those pearly white teeth in that smile a mile wide, and I realize what the letter is.
Steph blurts out a startlingly loud “Is that from Spelman?!” before I can say anything. I just sit in my chair, petrified, staring at the envelope. My hands feel sticky, and I’m suddenly not hungry. I think I’m both nervous and excited at the same time, but both those emotions feel like nausea and heart palpitations, so it’s hard to tell. I think of what I should text Malcolm if I get in. I think of what to text Malcolm if I don’t get in. Mom is holding the envelope out to me with a smile, expecting me to take it and rip it open like it’s Christmas morning the way Steph did when she got the election results declaring her president of Beta Beta Psi.
I reach up and take the envelope and realize my hands are shaking. What am I so afraid of? A yes means I’m going to Spelman! I get to be with Malcolm in Atlanta while he goes to Morehouse! We’ll be going to historically Black colleges in Atlanta that are literally two minutes apart. We’ve even talked about getting our own place together on either campus. It’s what we’ve always wanted. It’s all he’s been talking about lately—being with me. I can envision it now: he’ll wave at me across the street between classes, we’ll make out in the plaza over lunch break, just the two of us on the grass in the hot Atlanta sun, and we’ll share a bed at night. The idea is so romantic it sends a flutter through my chest.
But a no would mean all kinds of things I’m too afraid to think about, namely Malcolm’s disappointment. I didn’t tell him I applied to Emory, which is also in Atlanta, as a backup school. If I can’t attend the historically Black college next door to him, I might as well try for the sub−Ivy League school down the street, right? So we can at least be close to each other? But shortly after I sent out the last of my college applications, he and I found ourselves lying under the stars on the trampoline in my backyard, dreaming together, when he looked over at me and asked where I’d applied. Something deep within me—call it intuition, call it vibes, call it psychic powers—guided me to answer simply, “Spelman.”
He rolled over to face me, barefoot, in a T-shirt and sweats, with his legs curled up and one arm tucked under his head, smiling at
me, and said, “I only applied to Morehouse. I ain’t going nowhere but an HBCU.” Curious, I asked him why. He sucked his teeth and said, “Any non-HBCU would be a continuation of Jefferson.” And then, when I smiled at him, because I totally feel him on that assessment, he reached up and brushed my cheek and said, “If I can’t learn around my people, I can’t really learn,” and pulled me close and kissed me. But as I melted against him, I couldn’t help but be lost in thought. Emory might be another Jefferson, but I’d go through Jefferson all over again, just to be with him. I know he’d do the same for me, although he got his letter from Morehouse last week, so he won’t have to. Now our dreams hang in the balance with just me, with whatever is inside this envelope.
Steph’s next outburst sucks me back into the dining room. Everyone’s forks are down, and all eyes are on me.
“It’s a thick envelope!” she exclaims. “They only send you a thick envelope if you got in, so they can tell you all about the college and what to expect on your first day, and how much scholarship money they’re giving you—”
Mom clears her throat exaggeratedly, and Steph stops midsentence.
“I’m just trying to make her feel better,” whines Steph. “Go on, Kiera, open it! Let’s see!”
Even Dad, who’s been noticeably quiet this whole time, is watching me in anticipation.
“If it’s a no,” I begin, tearing away the corner of the envelope, “you guys are going to feel really ridiculous. It’s just a letter. Whatever it says, life goes on.”
As much as I’m saying this to my family, I’m also saying it to myself. It’s just a letter. But the pounding in my throat says otherwise. I tip out the contents of the envelope onto the kitchen table next to my plate and pick up the top sheet with the big blue Spelman letterhead. My eyes zoom to the very first word under Dear Ms. Johnson:
SLAY Page 4
