I pick up my napkin and wipe sauce from the corners of my mouth and my fingers. Malcolm is kissing my temple as I’m swallowing and trying to stop laughing so I don’t choke. He’s laughing against my neck now, which makes the hair on my arms stand up.
“You gon’ let me come over tonight?” he asks, his kisses making their way up to my cheek. “I miss talking to you like this, just us.”
Talking. Right.
I’m suddenly tempted to text Harper that we can study math another time, that a girl has needs, and that if she’s actually my friend, she’ll understand. But as I’m staring up at the TV without really processing how the video-game story is playing out, the closed-captioning appears below a boy who looks a few years younger than me, tears streaming down his face, gesturing hysterically behind him toward a section of the road cordoned off by the caution tape.
It was over a damn game, man. It was a game! That’s my brother in there.
And what game is that? asks the reporter.
S’called SLAY. Homeboy and I been playing every night for forever.
The words freeze me where I sit, and I read them again to make sure I’m not imagining it. SLAY. It’s written in plain English on the screen, but my mind can’t process the words. It takes me a moment to realize my jaw is clenched, and I suddenly feel like throwing up. By now, Malcolm has noticed the panic in my face and turned his attention up to the screen.
“Black kings been out here getting killed over money for millennia. Now we gettin’ shot for fake money.”
Malcolm looks back at me, but I’m barely paying attention as I read the screen. A middle-aged, overweight, dark-skinned woman with a cheap wig peeking out of her hair bonnet is sobbing uncontrollably, held by a man who looks to be the same age. I hear Malcolm’s voice somewhere that sounds far away.
“And they gotta make sure to show these queens out here disgracing themselves by wearing them hair-hats,” he says, clasping my hand, which is still sticky with dried sloppy joe sauce, between both of his. “It reminds me how lucky I am to have you.”
I silently hope the cringing my insides are doing doesn’t show on my face.
My phone buzzes again, but I can’t get to it without pulling away from Malcolm’s hands, which would be rude. He’s being romantic, and the last thing I want to do is direct his attention to my conversations with Cicada.
I lean into him and kiss his cheek to distract him as I read the next text on the screen. The news is back to the boy now, and the captions spring to life again.
We ran a hustle together. We spent hours SLAYing, dueling, stacking coins. We pooled all our coins in Jamal’s account so he could buy [expletive] for us. He tried to hold ’em for ransom for real dollars, and . . . this dude we never shoulda been playing with, he’s bad news, man. Came and shot Jamal. He shot Jamal in his sleep for hijacking damn game coins, man! That was my brother! Jamal was my brother!
A photo overtakes the screen, this time a mug shot. Another boy who looks to be about seventeen—my age—with cold, dead eyes and a clenched jaw is glaring at the camera with blood pooling at the corner of his mouth. His skin looks sullen, dull and ashy, and his gray sweater collar looks overstretched on one side, like it came to blows just to get him to the police department for a mug shot. The name Jeremiah Marshall is plastered under the photo, above the title SLAY Murderer. This guy had a SLAY account—has a SLAY account. He has a character somewhere in the game, and a virtual wallet with SLAY coins in it, and he took the life of another human being because that person wouldn’t return his coins—his game livelihood—after they struck some kind of deal. He murdered a child over something I created.
It all washes over me so fast. I feel dizzy.
“I’m sorry, Malcolm, I think I might be sick,” I say. I snatch my backpack up from the seat, scramble out from behind the table, and before I can leave, I hear Malcolm’s voice behind me.
“You bed’ not be pregnant,” he grumbles.
I don’t even have time to be mad at him for that. I can’t decide whether I need to make up this sudden departure to him later when I finally do invite him over, or demand an apology from him for that disgusting comment. With trembling hands, I pull my phone out and scan the three consecutive messages from Cicada.
Cicada: He’s been offline since the quarterfinals.
Cicada: I’m rescheduling for next Thursday at six thirty p.m. your time.
Cicada: Is that okay? I’m so sorry.
My fingers fly across the keyboard as I navigate through the swarms of students and vanish down the hallway to the bathroom, where I shut myself inside a stall, lean against the wall, and try my best to breathe. I think about going to my next class, but I’m too shaky, so I decide to do what I almost never do. I’m going to skip class and go home.
Me: Cancel. I know what happened to Anubis.
5. GAME CHANGER
* * *
Does this make me a murderer? Did I kill Jamal?
I’ve been staring at my VR screen so long my eyes are dry and itchy. My back and feet hurt from standing for too long. My hands are sweaty inside my gloves.
Anubis is standing in front of me. I found him on the top floor of an adobe in the Desert, where he has a bed, a nightstand, and a shelf full of armor, exactly where his human—Jamal—left him. His head is that of a short-haired black dog with a long, strong nose and glowing white eyes, and his blinding-white robe and gold sash make him look misplaced in the humble clay house.
He’s moving slightly, swaying slowly from side to side as if he’s real.
Have I killed him? Was it me? It feels so painfully real now to remember there are actual people behind the characters I see in my headset. This Egyptian god of a character that stands before me, who’s an epic warrior here in the SLAY universe, is just a kid in the real world—around my age. Was a kid. I can’t stop shaking. This is my fault. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve included in the list of game rules that you can’t trade real money for SLAY coins. Maybe then, Jamal wouldn’t have tried to hold his tribe’s SLAY coins for ransom once they pooled them into his account. Not like it would’ve done anything. People do what people do. But . . . I can’t shake this feeling, tight in the pit of my stomach, that I could’ve done something.
I think back to that day I came home from Harper’s house three years ago, when we both played Legacy of Planets—it was the very first time I was called a nigger. After I had finally customized my character, who had to be a dwarf if I wanted to make her skin tone as dark as mine is in real life, I went to the first character I saw on the map—I don’t even remember his username—and he took one look at my character and whipped out that word. I never told Harper or Wyatt because I didn’t want to ruin the game for them. In fact, I kept playing that day. I kept playing that week, that month, and the rest of that year. I wanted so badly to love Legacy of Planets, because who doesn’t love the idea of having a virtual miniature them who can go on campaigns and fight dragons and gorgons with no stakes except for virtual character damage and loss of items or coins? Who doesn’t want to have a world at their fingertips—where you can do whatever you want within the limits of the game, where your actions have no consequences, and where you can hide behind a keyboard without being held accountable for what you say and do? Everyone wants that freedom. And whenever I played Legacy, I’d hear all the things that people wish they could say to people in real life.
Even when I played as an elven princess with snow-white skin, I’d encounter parties in the woods with red armbands threatening to lynch the dwarves, the only dark-skinned characters in the game. Behavior like that goes unregulated, and I can’t blame the developers. With a game as big as Legacy, with millions of players worldwide, it’s impossible to police the words exchanged between characters. The most they can do is encourage users to report abusive behavior, but by the time anything happens to the troll, they’ve either vanished or created a new account altogether. And this problem isn’t just in Legacy of Planets—
it’s symptomatic of the whole online multiplayer universe.
I once tried playing Mummy, a game similar to Legacy except that instead of a Lord of the Rings high-fantasy world with dragons and elves, it takes place in ancient Egypt and you can actually play as a dark-skinned character. Things were going fine for days. I had acquired basic armor, basic weapons, and a few spells. Then, one day, well after I should’ve quit, I tried to intervene in a creepy séance in the woods when the campaign leader invited me to join their ritual, and I said no, and that they should probably disband before they got in trouble. That was back when I was fourteen and thought saying “please” and “thank you” would actually get me anywhere in an MMORPG like Mummy. That asshole—who could very well have been an eight-year-old in real life—and his gang attacked my character and stripped me of every item I had in my inventory. My armor, my shields, my potions, my Diamond Gauntlet that I’d been saving up coins for since day one. Gone. That was the last I ever played Legacy or Mummy, and the day I downloaded the Voyage engine and googled how to add my first skybox.
I remember creating Emerald, making her skin my shade, just a few shades shy of passing the paper bag test. I designed her clothes and built her a house, wondering how I could share her with everyone I knew who needed a world like this. I created a Twitter account under a fake name and sent links to every Black person I followed, urging them to join me on the forum I called SLAY. I never thought the game would get this big, this time-consuming, or this dangerous. I never thought a boy would lose his life because of me. I stare at Anubis, still swaying slightly in this little clay adobe, looking directly at me. I hold out my hands and look down at them, at Emerald’s hands. Would I still have created her if I had known? A message from Cicada appears in the corner of my screen and I navigate to it.
Cicada: This is my fault.
Me: How?
Cicada: If I hadn’t been late coming back from class, I could have noticed Anubis was offline sooner. I could have reached out to him. I could have made sure he was okay. And maybe if I’d named myself Nubia to begin with, we might have become friends and I would’ve known even sooner that something was wrong. . . .
All her logic is ridiculous, but I can’t tell her this.
This is part of who Cicada is. She blames herself for just about everything that goes wrong in the game. When we opened up the Swamp region a few months ago, she fell through a hole in the terrain and apologized for unearthing the hole, even though the terrain was my design and the hole was my fault.
I can’t convince her this isn’t her fault, but I can try to assure her that this was unpreventable.
Me: There are over 200K active players and another 300K inactive. That makes 500K human beings with SLAY characters. How many of those do you think have died in the last three years?
Cicada takes a long time to reply. I’m hoping my question helps to console her instead of making it worse. When I’m distraught, I find comfort in logic and numbers. If I hadn’t gotten into Spelman, I would have wanted someone to remind me that I’ve still got my application to Emory, and that all hope for my romantic life isn’t lost, even if Malcolm and I wouldn’t be on the same campus. Even if I have to convince him that Emory wouldn’t change me.
If Cicada were in such a situation, I think she’d want someone to sit there with her and just listen, and remind her that all is not lost, and that it’s not her fault.
Then I think of the next best thing I can do.
I take one last look at Anubis’s face and slide the SLAY chat panel out from the right side of my screen until it completely covers his face. I click Cicada’s name, and the game shoots me at light speed over the Desert, over the dunes and the caravans and the yurts and cacti and houses and camels and the occasional oasis. I fly over the grasslands, where I spy a herd of hippos splashing through river water, a pack of hyenas close behind them, and I keep flying until the snow begins to swirl around my face and I’m looking at white mountain peaks in the distance.
Cicada: Can I tell you something?
I type of course but then delete it as those three dots pop up, indicating she’s still typing.
Cicada: I know we never really talk about personal stuff, but Jamal’s death made me realize that life is too short to miss getting to know someone like you. So here goes.
Cicada: I live in Paris.
Oh God, that’s personal. What if I were a serial killer or something? What if news of where she lives got out into the SLAY universe? Part of me is nervous, even knowing this information. Paris. But the other half is curious, and honored that she trusts me. Paris! I smile. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris one day. I wonder what it’s like to live there. I want to ask her, but she’s still typing.
Cicada: You know I go to school, but you don’t know that I’m in my second year of college at the École normale supérieure, a Paris Sciences et Lettres institution. They take only 200 students every year.
Cicada: I love school, but my parents love it more.
Wow, she’s a sophomore in college! Why did I think she was my age? I reread her messages as I descend and my feet land in the snow. I begin to walk, my socks silent against the carpet in my room, and the snow crunches with each step I take up to Cicada’s white cube of a house, camouflaged among the snowy hillsides.
My green gown flies behind me as I run up to her door. Her messages are coming rapid-fire now.
Cicada: I’ve never dated anyone.
Cicada: I’ve never traveled outside Europe.
Cicada: I love Vegemite.
Cicada: I’m a Cancer.
Cicada: I’ve never played Candy Crush, and I think I was the only person in the world to hate “Gangnam Style” and “Nyan Cat.” I’m not on social media, and I only recognize a handful of memes. In fact, I’m just generally bad at the Internet.
I’m smiling now as I knock on her virtual door. It swings open and there she is, still wearing her white gown. She did a fantastic job creating a white gown that somehow doesn’t look like a wedding dress. The fluffy black fur-lined cloak helps. It looks editorial, very high fashion. Very Parisian. Her text appears above her head now.
“It’s rude to come over unexpected,” she says with a grin, “but I’ve been expecting you.”
She turns and welcomes me into her house. I’ve only been here a few times. In her living room, she’s arranged just about every yellow item that exists in the game. Yellow sofa, yellow chairs, yellow rug, creamy yellow carpet, yellow drapes, yellow dishes, yellow vases and sunflowers—everything in the room is some variation of yellow.
Cicada: So you’re not mad at me?
Me: For what?
Cicada: The whole Candy Crush thing. You’re not going to take away my mod rights for being unqualified to run a video game, are you?
Me: If I hired you knowing only your name and credentials, how am I going to fire you for never having played Candy Crush? If I didn’t bother to ask, that’s on me. But had I known . . .
I take a look around the living room just as a loud ding! rings out from the kitchen. She seems to float to the oven, from which she pulls out a huge loaf of bread—bigger than the oven, actually. Why did we make it that big? It’s comically huge. We did make it look good, though. I can see the steam rising from it, and I take a big deep breath, wishing I could smell it. My room smells instead like lavender and shea butter.
Cicada: It’s on the news here in Paris, too.
She holds out a piece of bread to me and I take it and eat and watch Emerald’s energy meter tick up and up, even though Cicada’s message exhausts the real me.
Me: I haven’t turned on the news since. I don’t know if I can.
Cicada: Jamal Rice was only sixteen. God, I’ve been crying all afternoon. Why can’t I stop crying?!
Only sixteen. A year younger than me.
Cicada: Can I tell you something that might ACTUALLY get me fired?
I hear a doorbell ring. As Emerald, I turn around to look at Cicada’s yellow door, whi
ch is closed, and then I remember she doesn’t have a doorbell. I rip off my headset, gloves, and socks and hear the faint creak of our front door, and my mom’s voice following shortly after with, “Hey, Harper, how’re you doing, baby? It’s good to see you.”
Shit!
I glance at my clock: 8:05 p.m. I forgot to tell Harper not to come over tonight to study. I need time to process this—all of it—Jamal, the news, what to do with his character, Anubis, all these messages in my inbox. Careless, so careless of me! I yank the headset back onto my head, my thumb accidentally catching and ripping out a few hairs right at my temple. I wince and crank out the message:
Me: I’m SO sorry g2g a friend came over uninvited. B back latr.
Eyes still teary, I rip off the headset again and throw it, the gloves, and the socks back into my bottom drawer and run to my door just as it swings open and Harper’s face appears before me. At first she looks happy to see me, and then she looks confused.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asks, stepping past me into my room and making herself comfortable on the sofa under my elevated bunk bed.
“Nothing, why?” I ask, focusing on catching my breath.
She’s wearing a smug grin. “You look like you just got some some-some with Malcolm, except I don’t see Malcolm anywhere.”
I roll my eyes at her use of “some-some,” whatever that is. I think she meant some’m-some’m, but I let it go. I’m not in the mood to correct her pronunciation any more than Harper’s ever in the mood for correction. She’s on her phone now, her thumb scrolling, meaning she’s not really looking for an explanation into why I’m so sweaty. I can throw some BS at her and change the subject.
“I was practicing my dancing,” I say. A story she’ll buy. “You know I still can’t do the Running Man?”
It may sound unbelievable, but it’s the truth. I really can’t dance. Mom can, and Steph can, but while Black Jesus was kissing the foreheads of other Black babies and bestowing upon them the gift of happy feet, he somehow missed me and my dad.
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