Grounded, page 2
Turns out pleading with your iPad does not, in fact, make it work faster. I bite my lip—the flight-tracker app is refusing to load. Not that it’s my iPad’s fault. This airport is the worst! The longest security line, the most pointless food court (half the restaurants are closed and it’s not even nine o’clock!), the most uncomfortable seats, and seriously the worst Wi-Fi in the history of humanity. I really wish I had a phone.
My parents and I are situated strategically by the boarding entrance, our backs to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the planes coming and going. I can’t stop myself from continuously peering back at the tarmac. Our flight takes off soon, but the plane is nowhere to be found.
“I have a bad feeling,” I murmur.
“It’ll be okay.” My father ruffles my hair.
“And my iPad barely works,” I complain. “There’s a good app to track flights, but—”
“Patience, Sami. Following the plane’s flight path won’t make it come any sooner.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But—
“I’ll just check the monitors,” I tell my parents.
“Good idea.” My mother nods. “And I’m sure the plane will be here before you know it.”
I’m not so sure about that. I stick my tablet in my book bag and look at the gray clouds outside blotting out any stars or moonlight.
I carefully avoid outstretched legs and the luggage strewn in the aisles as I make my way toward the bright-blue electronic board listing departure times.
Stepping into the hallway, I nearly bump into a golden-brown retriever.
“Woof!” He’s wagging his tail at me and wears a sign that reads TRAVEL BUDDY.
“Would you like to pet him?” the woman holding the leash asks.
“Uh—” I say.
“Sometimes animals like Biscuit here visit airports. They’re ready to snuggle anyone who wants to feel a little better about their flight.” She smiles. “Can be a little nerve-racking for some people sometimes.”
Do I look that freaked out? Did this dog beeline straight for me?
I awkwardly pat the dog’s head. “Uh. He’s . . . cute. I have something I was on my way to do, but thanks.”
I jostle for a spot among the other travelers crowded around the monitor and look up at the departure times. Finally, I see it. MCO. The three-letter code for Orlando, Florida. On time. Which should make me feel better, except I’m not so sure about that.
For one thing, we’re supposedly boarding in thirty minutes, and our plane isn’t even here yet. For another thing, those are some super- dark and low-hanging clouds gathering out the window behind where my parents are sitting. Cumulonimbus clouds are not something you want to see when you need your flight to take off as soon as possible so you can at least get some rest before your very first away karate competition.
Sensei Madea is counting on me. He said so himself. I’m the one who has the roundhouse kick down best. Last week at practice, we all had to show him our best moves, and I nearly toppled him!
“Way to go!” He grinned once he caught his balance. He gave me a huge high five. “You’re going to help us bring home the championship, Sami!”
My outfit is pressed and starched and hanging behind my bedroom door. I even made a list of all sorts of fun stuff we can play as a group on the bus ride up like mafia, celebrity, and heads-up. (Coach Madea said we’re not going to zone out on our phones for the whole drive, which works for me, since I don’t have a phone.) And since the dojo’s only two miles from the University of Florida, my big brother, Ibrahim, said he would come to cheer me on!
But if this flight doesn’t take off as planned, everything will be ruined.
Ibrahim always tells me there’s no point in worrying about things that are out of your control. Half the time, whatever you’re freaking out about doesn’t even happen.
Except that means that the other half of the time, it does.
And right now, I flinch as the blue “on time” departure next to Orlando switches to a bright red “delayed” and the time flips from 9:30 P.M. to 9:35 P.M.
It’s just five minutes, I tell myself as my pulse quickens. Three hundred seconds. That’s all. Except, actually, no. That’s not all. I know how this goes. First it’s five minutes. Then ten. Then thirty. Then . . .
No, no, no. I shake my head and take a step away from the monitors and try to channel my brother. Five minutes might really just be five minutes. Everything could be okay. But as much as I tell myself this, my hammering heart refuses to believe me.
“Ruqi! Where are you?” a boy shouts out.
A boy and a girl—both about my age—hurry in my direction.
“Stop playing!” he says. “This isn’t funny!”
“Don’t worry, Ruqi’s around here somewhere,” the girl reassures the boy.
The girl’s hair is tied up in a ponytail, and she has on glasses. A colorful scarf is tied like a lasso around one of the loops of her jeans. The boy looks familiar. As I get closer, I take in his dark jeans and his shoes—the super-white Nikes—and I realize I definitely did see him.
He was at the conference, and his little sister jumped onto the stage during the final keynote address. She’d marched up to that microphone and spoken with so much confidence, her voice echoing through the room, that for a second I thought maybe she was the keynote speaker (even though her head didn’t peek over the podium). The boy scooped her from the stage, but not before leaning in and joking about her being the warm-up act. Everyone laughed.
Some people really do stay cool, calm, and collected, even when their little sister leaps onto the stage. I could never have done that. Even the little girl, who couldn’t have been more than five, was cooler than I could ever be. Although, as I see him closer up, he looks a little flustered right now.
When I check the monitor again, my heart drops straight to my feet. The time has changed again. Our flight is officially ten minutes late. And there is still no plane at the gate. I take a deep breath in and out. Again. And again. It doesn’t help.
“Relax,” Ibrahim would tell me if he was here right now. “Instead of fixating on what’s freaking you out, do something to get your mind off things.”
He’s right. Freaking out just makes you freak out more—it’s like a spiraling stack of dominoes crashing down. I know a ten-minute delay (for now!) isn’t the end of the world. There are way worse things happening in the universe right this very minute. I just wish my brain could get through to my heart, which isn’t listening at all. Beads of sweat pop up along my forehead.
As I approach the bathroom to splash my face with water, a boy stumbles out. He’s the same kid from earlier. Up close, I can see he looks scared.
Maybe even more than me right now.
“Are you—are you okay?” I ask.
He looks at me and slowly shakes his head. “I—” he begins, but before he can finish his sentence, we hear a shout.
“Ruqi?” It’s the girl with the lasso scarf. She’s hurrying out of the girls’ bathroom next door. Looking at the boy, she shakes her head. “Not in there either.”
“We’re running out of places,” he says. There’s a quiver in his voice.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll find her.”
The puzzle pieces start to come together. The girl from yesterday. She’s missing. No wonder this boy looks terrified.
“Do you need help?” I ask. “Security’s got a desk down the hall past my gate.”
The girl looks at me with surprise. She brightens a little. Uh-oh.
“We could use some help.” She nods. “I’m Hanna. This is Feek. His little sister, Ruqi, wandered off, and it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation. Maybe you could help us cover more area?”
They want my help? The kid who was on his way to douse his face in the sink to fend off a meltdown? I glance at Feek, but he’s busy scanning the gate behind me.
“Oh. That’s . . . that’s awful,” I say. I lost track of my parents at Disney World when I was five, and I still feel slightly traumatized. Ruqi must be terrified! But why are they looking for her themselves?
“I have a flight,” I tell her. “But we should alert—”
“Yeah, we all have flights.” She frowns.
“Sh-shouldn’t we tell someone?” I try again. “Security? The police?”
“Security?” She crinkles her nose. “Security here is not exactly amazing—trust me on that. Feek’s got some good ideas of where she’s dashed off. We’re narrowing it down by process of elimination.”
“Yeah,” Feek says. “She’s gotta be here somewhere.”
My cheeks flush. I’m nervous to say no. But I’m equally nervous to say yes. When I look at Feek and Hanna discussing the next place they’ll search, I can see Feek’s worry waft over him like swirls of frost.
They need help.
I think of Ibrahim: “Instead of fixating, do something.”
I glance at the departure monitor. Sure enough, our delay has gone from ten minutes to thirty minutes. I join Feek and Hanna. We take off at a brisk pace down the hallway. I might not be able to control that departure board, but I can definitely do this. I can try to help them find Ruqi.
The Chocolate Garden was closed. C-L-O-S-E-D. Doors locked, lights off, CLOSED.
It’s my favorite place in the world, and my mom promised to take me for my “special” birthday trip this weekend. She was giving the keynote address at some Islamic convention, and she said it would be fun for us to have some quality time together.
So I spent DAYS planning my trip to the Chocolate Garden—my outfit and all the videos I was going to post on NokNok—because I’m a SWEETIE, which is kind of like a foodie, but I post about all things SWEET!
Me at French bakeries!
Me at old-fashioned ice cream parlors!
Me at fine candy stores!
And the Chocolate Garden was going to be me in chocolate heaven.
BUT my mom had appearances and meetings booked the entire weekend, and by the time we stopped at the Chocolate Garden on our way to the airport, the only thing left for me to do was look through the darkened windows.
Now I’m stuck at the gate with Congressmom, the super-important Sarah Najjar. She’s taking a call, and I’m scrolling through NokNok and seriously wondering why she even had me. Like, should you be a parent if you can’t provide for your kid’s basic needs for chocolate and NokNok? (Which is my job, okay? It’s not all fun. It’s more like homework, and parents are supposed to help you with your homework.)
And yes, it is a NEED. Not just a want, like my mom was trying to convince me. She consoled me that there was another Chocolate Garden branch in the airport, but when we got here, it was CLOSED, too.
My mom doesn’t understand that the Chocolate Garden’s dreamy milk chocolate, nougat, and pretzel bar is seriously the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, and posting about it was going to boost my follower count. My two best friends, Kennedy and Mackenzie, eked past me with their hair tutorials just last week. Which really bothered me. Like there aren’t already a million people doing hair on NokNok!
Thinking about all the ways my hopes have been dashed this weekend frustrates me so much that I grab my stuff and move four seats down.
As soon as I sit, I hear a notification on my phone.
Mackenzie: AAAH, how was it? Bet you got a ton of clips
Kennedy: What time is your birthday party when you get back? Can’t wait
I stare at their messages, but I can’t think of what to write back. We’ve been friends since the first grade, but sometimes they don’t understand my life. They’re always telling me how lucky I am because I go on all these trips with Congress-mom, but they don’t see this side—the canceled plans, the getting dragged to a Muslim conference where I felt totally out of place.
That last part I definitely don’t discuss with my friends. My mom is always telling me how her grandparents came from Lebanon and how they worked hard to build a good life for their children and grandchildren. She wants me to grow up to be a strong Arab American, Muslim woman, but I don’t feel Arab or Muslim. Going to MONA only made that feeling worse.
We don’t practice Islam like the people at MONA, praying and fasting, eating halal meat. There’s only one other Muslim kid in my class, a girl named Sumaya, and things are COMPLICATED between us.
I reread Kennedy and Mackenzie’s messages. Do I tell them I didn’t make it to the Chocolate Garden? How do I explain that?
I slide my phone into my purse. Maybe they’ll think I’m already in the air.
Air is exactly what I need right now. But since I can’t go outside, I’ll settle for something sweet. I bet the only thing worth trying in the food court is a sad cinnamon roll from Cinna-Yum, the boring dessert you can find in any mall.
I sigh loudly, hoping Mom will hear me. The commonness of a cinnamon roll, after thinking about Crunchy Fluffy Dream Bars, is SO depressing.
Mom doesn’t look over, so I walk back, tap her shoulder, and stick out my hand. She’s still on her call, but she digs into her work bag and hands me a twenty-dollar bill before sending me off with an air kiss.
I head toward the food court with my carry-on bag. My first order of business is to put on the outfit I had planned to change into at the Chocolate Garden. I may find some interesting candy in a gift shop, and there’s no way I’d go on camera in the outfit I’m wearing now. Mom packed me a separate wardrobe of “Muslim” clothes—long-sleeve button-up shirts and headscarves that I let fall onto my shoulders most of the time.
At every gate, I see Muslim families: moms in hijab, teenage daughters in hijab, some dads wearing caps. I recognize some of their faces after seeing them for two days straight.
One family in particular stands out. Their little girl climbed onstage before my mom’s keynote and gave her own speech before her big brother dragged her away. I don’t see the little girl and her brother now, but the mom is nursing the baby under her scarf. She gave those kids the sternest look when she came back to the table. I couldn’t stop stealing glances at them all night.
Seeing these MONA families makes me want to change out of these clothes even faster.
When I finally step into the food court, in a super-cute knee-length turquoise summer dress with a subtle ruffle on the hem, I feel more like myself. I decide on a Cinna-Yum and a decaf iced mocha latte with whipped cream because I deserve it.
While I wait in line, I glance over at the Chocolate Garden, with its locked metal gate. Maybe I’ll take a sad shot in front of the CLOSED sign to post later, after I come up with a good story about why we didn’t make it there. Sad posts are great because people feel sorry for you.
When I turn back, I’m surprised to see the girl from my mom’s speech at the front of the line. She’s ordering something, but then a Cinna-Yum employee motions for her to follow him.
The name Ruqi comes to me. Her brother made a joke about how Ruqi was warming up the crowd. It was the funniest part of the weekend. Even my mom got a laugh when she said, “There goes my future intern.”
But now Ruqi’s alone. I hear the employee say, “Do you know where your mom is?”
Any other kid would have been scared, but she calmly replies, “I’m not supposed to bother her, but I want a Cinna-Yum.”
Even though she says “supposed” like deposed, and “bother” like bovver, this is one confident preschooler. I didn’t talk to anyone but my mom all weekend, and here goes Ruqi ordering by herself at Cinna-Yum—and, from the looks of it, without any money.
I look behind me and to either side. Her mom must still be feeding the baby, but her brother is probably going to show up any minute now and yank her away again.
I return to the menu. This kid is not my problem. My problem is the Chocolate Garden three stores down taunting me with its locked doors. I need to order my Cinna-Yum and iced mocha latte, maybe take my sad picture in front of the Chocolate Garden, and get back to my gate.
But for some reason, I can’t stop turning around to see if the brother is coming.
The employee asks the cashier to call security, and that’s when I feel terrible. If I don’t say something, this is going to turn into a huge thing that is going to freak out this kid and her family.
Ugh. Am I really going to do this? I’m turning into Congress-mom, sticking my nose into other people’s business.
I step out of the line and walk over to Ruqi and the employee. “Wait,” I say. “I can help find her family.”
Ruqi looks up at me, puzzled, and I feel silly. Even though I recognize Ruqi from the speech, she doesn’t know who I am.
I don’t want the employee to think I’m a creepy kidnapper, so I crouch down until we’re eye to eye and say, “Assalamu alaikum, Ruqi.”
The words almost startle me. I’ve never used that greeting before, and I don’t know how it got into my mouth. “I was at MONA too. I can take you back to your mom.”
“But I want my Cinna-Yum,” Ruqi says, completely unbothered.
I remember my twenty-dollar bill. There’s plenty for the both of us.
“We’ll take two Cinna-Yums,” I say. I don’t mention my drink. Something tells me I’m going to need two hands until I get this kid back to her family.
I’m gripping the unicorn headband in my hoodie pocket. I’m holding it to keep my hands from doing what every instinct is telling me to do, which is to grab my phone and call Mom right now. To tell her I messed up. To cry like a baby. To say, “I don’t know where Ruqi is, she wasn’t at the machine thing, she wasn’t with the iPads, she wasn’t in the bathroom, and she left her goofy headband even though she wears it to bed, and a horrible person has probably run away with her or maybe she got stuck on a conveyor belt and has gone wherever all lost luggage goes, and now we’ll never see her again!”
I squeeze the headband and take a deep breath. I can’t tell her that.
Stay cool. Hanna seems to know what she’s doing. With the way she’s typing so much into her notes app, she’s got to know something.
But what if the scared-looking boy who’s walking with us was right? Maybe we do need security. I look back at him and take in his light-blue polo tucked into jeans I’d never wear. The kind worn by kids who run and tell teachers everything—even stuff that isn’t that bad—and get everyone in trouble. Nah.
