We were at the Juneteenth festival\u2014music, food trucks, kids running wild, the whole neighborhood packed into the streets.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d only looked away for a second to pay for a funnel cake, but when I turned back, my nephew Zavi was gone.<\/p>\n
Panic hit me like a wave. I dropped everything and started shouting his name, checking every bounce house, every face in the crowd.<\/p>\n
I was two seconds from calling 911 when I spotted him\u2014curled up, dead asleep, in a police officer\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n
The officer was standing off to the side, calm like this wasn\u2019t even the first time something like this had happened.<\/p>\n
He gave me a little nod when I rushed up, breathless and shaking. Said Zavi wandered off near the snow cone truck and got tired. \u201cDidn\u2019t want to leave him alone,\u201d he said, like it was nothing.<\/p>\n
I thanked him, took Zavi back, and tried to brush it off. But I noticed people whispering behind me, phones out.<\/p>\n
Some were smiling, but others weren\u2019t. One woman near the food stand shook her head and muttered, \u201cMust be nice to get that kind of response.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first I didn\u2019t get it. Then it clicked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were at the Juneteenth festival\u2014music, food trucks, kids running wild, the whole neighborhood packed into the streets. I\u2019d only looked away for a second to pay… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n