Slay: Chapters 3–7

In the duel I saw, using the Michael Johnson card, he sprinted toward his adversary—Orlea, a scorpion from the western part of the Desert region—did a handspring off her shoulders, grabbed her venomous tail, jammed it firmly into one of the sandy blocks that make up the arena wall, and landed squarely on his feet.

But I’ve seen Spade battle too, and his greatest weapon—often underestimated—is his impeccable timing.

I even went to Monoprix and bought a huge bottle of lemon juice and tried boiling it full potency, which didn’t do anything for the kettle smell, but it made my little flat smell fresh and clean.

Since she got sick, the amount of time I spend in Florence has slowly dwindled. More money for her treatment equals less money for my travel.

I could call her later today when she might be awake, but that’s hard to gauge, since her sleep has been unpredictable lately.

I wish she could’ve seen the Weave card in action. It’s a rare one that functions just like the Twist-Out card in that you can wield long tendrils of hair, but it’s slightly less versatile—yes, that’s intentional—and deals twice as much damage—not intentional, but accurate in many cases.

I’ve never seen a balance that high. Maybe we need to start offering more purchase incentives? Or increase the price of upgrades?

The train lurches forward, and the inertia throws me backward against a middle-aged man in a suit, and I hurriedly apologize, “Excusez-moi. Vous allez bien?” and he looks up at me and nods with a smile and a courteous “Pas de problème! Votre français est parfait. D'où êtes-vous?” which translates literally to “I’m fine. Your French is perfect. Where are you from?” or, more loosely, “Where are you from, since obviously you’re not native to Paris?”

I look around, searching the throngs of students in the cafeteria like I’m searching for a lion among tall grass, because I know that if the word “Spelman” comes up, and we start talking, I’ll have to fake being the ecstatic ball of excitement I know he’ll be expecting.

Five hundred fifty-five of the students at Jefferson are white, leaving just twenty-five students of color estranged and unfamiliar with each other.

Only four of us are Black—Me, Steph, Malcolm, and the new member of Beta Beta, Jazmin. When your demographic makes up such a tiny slice of the pie, it feels weird to reach out to the only students who look like you.

Cicada and I get to announce a forfeiture to his would-be opponent, Spade, and move on to the finals. But people don’t carve time out of their schedules to watch a forfeiture. They want a fight.

I look at Harper, whose eyes are wide with panic, and then at Wyatt, with his impish smile.

If I lie and say she’s not, he’ll ask questions like Why in the world are you friends with her? and, every time I pull out my phone, Why are you talking to her instead of me? although more subtly (and more likely): S’that your new white friend?

“There’s nothing to prove here, Malcolm. You’re confusing correlation with causation. Yes, there are Black men out there who date nonBlack women, and vice versa, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they hate them. You can be Black, and date outside your race, and advocate for everybody Black.”

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.

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.

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.

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’m not on social media, and I only recognize a handful of memes.

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.

While they launch into conversation, probably more Beta Beta Psi logistics, I pull out my phone and open WhatsApp.

My inbox has burgeoned from six hundred messages to over sixty thousand, and I already know it’s going to be full of stress.

I kneel and touch Louisiana Barbecue first, using my right hand since my left glove is prone to act up.

She yanks her hand up into the air and lunges at me, and I reflexively go reeling backward into the couch in my room, my arm catching the lamp in the corner.

“As for the question of the game being racist,” he continues, “we absolutely cannot solve this problem with more division in the gaming community. What we need right now is unity and constructive discourse to develop a solution that doesn’t exclude anyone, especially on the basis of race.”

“As for the question of the game being racist,” he continues, “we absolutely cannot solve this problem with more division in the gaming community. What we need right now is unity and constructive discourse to develop a solution that doesn’t exclude anyone, especially on the basis of race.”

And we’re learning now about the game’s elusive creator, known only as Emerald.

All we know of him is that he created the game three years ago, as ‘a fabulous mecca of Black excellence in which Nubian kings and queens across the diaspora can congregate, build each other up, and SLAY.’

“I mean, the very name of the game seems to incite violence, right?” asks Derek. “SLAY—it just sounds so vicious, doesn’t it?”