“WHAT THE HECK NOOR! HOW DO YOU LOSE A CHILD?!” I screamed with beads of sweat running down the side of my face. Images of my mother start appearing in my mind. We just finished having the longest, and what I thought was the most useless conversation, about how responsible I had to be to take care of a child and how this was my one chance to show my maturity. “Common mom, we’re going to the park it’s not that big a deal.”

       “It is to me and it should be to you to. You have my number so call me if you need anything OK? Meet you back here in 1 hour. I’ll be sitting with your aunt near the window.”

She said a whole bunch of other things but I lost interest and zoned out. I was daydreaming about playing on the swings. Squeaking, as the rusting metal grinds against the pole. The wind slapping my face as I let gravity pull my head back staring at the pitch black sky, gripping the rough metal on the chains. My legs breaking the wind as I fly forward.

       “OK, Nada? 
       “Ya OK mom. Can I go now?"
My cousin hitting my arm brought me back to reality.

       “DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?! I WENT DOWN THE SLIDE AND HE WAS GONE WHEN I GOT OUT!” She said with tears emerging from her brown glittering eyes. Somewhere is Alexandria, Egypt a city with more than 8 million people my little 3-year-old cousin was floundering around who knows where. With it being 41° degrees and August, humidity didn’t really help. You could see the tinted yellow dust particles making an arch around the light post. The sky was pitch black as if all of the stars had been sucked in and thrown up in a black hole.“Nada what am I going to do?” Shouted Noor. “ I was just grounded for breaking the TV and now I go and lose my baby brother! Who knows what my parents are going to do now!” At this point she was sobbing and I could feel her body shaking. I stood there motionless trying to figure out what my mom would do in this kind of situation. The only thing I could come up with was going to my mom and telling her, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what she would do. I finally came back my senses and said, “OK, he can’t be far so we need to spread out. Here’s the plan. Every two together. Salma and Jana, you guys go check near the pool, incase he walks near the water.”
       “OMG! WHAT IF HE FALLS IN THE POOL AND WHAT IF MY PARENTS WANNA GO SWIMMING AND WHAT IF THEY FIND HIM AND—“

       “SHUT UP NOOR!” I screamed, “He’s going to be fine, now calm down. I mostly said that to calm myself down. She put ideas in my head that I didn’t even think of until now. What if a stranger gives him candy but they secretly poisoned it and he eats it and—I stop myself before I went insane.“Ok. Back to the plan. Rania and Rahma, you guys check near the entrance, Noor and I will search the playground. We will find him. OK? ANNDD GO!” and we were off. You could hear the pathetic little squeezing screams of little girls from each and every corner. ADAM!! ADAM!! After about 5 minutes of yelling his name, I realized he was 3 and probably wouldn’t reply. I kept yelling anyway, with a tiny piece of hope deep down in my ferociously pumping heart. It’s kind of felt like getting back a test you know you failed but having a little hope that a miracle happened and someway, somehow you got something right. But right now, it feels like I’m a first grader, doing a grade 12-calculus test. We ran back and forth with our feet slapping the tiny little rocks. Rebounding of the ground, the pebbles would jump like newly popped kernels with each step we took. I could feel my heartbeat shaking my entire body, the hot air rushing though my mouth scorching my lungs.

“Nada,” Noor said with delicate little dewdrops of tears rolling down to her check. “ My mom and dad are going to kill me. They are actually literally going to ship me to a boarding school, where I’ll eventually die from who knows what they put in the food they give us there. I’m the worst sister ever! How could I possibly lose my younger brother?!”
       

“Don’t worry. I’m going to take all of the blame. This is entirely fault. I’m the oldest and I’m supposed to be the most responsible and my first opportunity to show my mom that I am, I go and lose my cousin. Don’t worry we’ll find him.” The more and more I said that sentence the more I found myself finding it harder and harder to believe. “I think we need to go tell our parents. They’ll know what to do.”
       

“WHAT! ARE YOU CRAZY? NO WAY! Did you not hear my speech? Forget boarding school. They’ll get so mad they’ll leave me here and move away and not tell me where they’re going and I’ll have to live in trees and eat leaves and berries“ she said trying to catch her breath with each sentence.
     

 “You’re a weird child,” I said grabbing her arm. “Let’s go find the rest of them.” We started walking towards the corner of the sidewalk, ducking under large branches of trees and leaves, my hair almost getting tangled in one of them. We finally got to the corner and we heard the song. The song that had been driving us crazy for the past 3 days. The song I swore that if I heard again would be the death of the IQ points that I probably didn’t have yet. The song he had been singing over and over and over again 24/7.  I turned around to find a little brown headed 3-year-old boy ,with mud all over his face and cloths, singing the bumblebee song like it was no body’s business. Strolling down the sidewalk clapping his two mini carrot fingered hands together. It was like heaven was shining down on him, like all of the light posts stopped working except one and he was under the spotlight. Everything suddenly stopped and the slow motion running in my head began. It was just like the movies, but instead of a couple in love it was two little girls running towards the younger cousin they lost. I ran up to him screaming his name and suffocated his face in my arms. I went down on my knees and squeezed his face with his tiny hands. He struggles to get out but my hands were like jail cells. When I finally accepted the fact that we had finally found him, I let him free and grabbed his hand that fit perfectly in my palm and met up with the rest. After all of the hugging and screaming, I’m pretty sure people thought we had never seen a 3-year-old before. “This never happened OK?” I said with a bit of laughter in my voice. “We go to our parents casually and we never hear of this again OK?” They nodded yes and we were on our way to the café. We walked in trying to keep a straight face. “Hey mom,” I said trying to contain my laughter.

       “Hey guys! Anything new?”
We stared at each other and burst out laughing.

 “Oh nothing,” I said smirking. And then she said six words that made me lose hope in ever getting away with this.
     

 “Why is Adam covered with mud?”