Slay

In SLAY, Kiera stares at Jamal Rice’s character, Anubis, and asks herself if she’s to blame for his death. She feels responsible because she didn’t expressly prohibit the exchange of SLAY coins for real money. She recalls how she first built SLAY three years ago after being the target of racial slurs and attacks from players in other games. She never could have anticipated that the game would become so big or be connected to a murder. A message from Cicada shows Kiera that she’s not the only one blaming herself for the boy’s death. The game’s players are discouraged from divulging personal information, but Cicada shares that she is a sophomore at a highly selective university in Paris. Cicada also tells Kiera that she’s been crying all day about Jamal, who was only 16.

Kiera has to hastily leave her heart-to-heart with Cicada when Harper arrives for her tutoring session. Wyatt tags along, wanting to interview Kiera about locs. Steph and Harper talk about the story the news is calling the SLAY murder, and Wyatt calls the game racist. Steph summarizes the history of racism in the United States and explains that it isn’t racist for “Black gamers [to] want their own space online away from the eyes of the majority” (109).