Trophy Kid by Steve Atinsky Read Free Book Online Page B

soldiers at the military base squatted down and gave me a shoe box. Inside were photographs of my mother, father, and sister they’d taken from our apartment. There were also several small toys: a top, some hand-carved animals, a snow globe of Dubrovnik, and a tiny metal fire engine. Another soldier handed Robert a small travel bag containing some of my clothes.
    I kept the shoe box in my lap all the way from Dubrovnik to Los Angeles; I even took it with me each time I went to the bathroom.
    I held it tightly in the limo that took us from the airport to Robert and Greta’s Bel-Air house.
    When Robert carried me up the stairs to my new bedroom, I clutched my shoe box as I twisted and turned and cried to be put down.
    While in Dubrovnik, Robert had hired a Croatian woman named Hana to be my live-in nanny and translator until I learned English. Greta had gone all out in putting together the perfect boy’s room, and Hana explained that it was now mine.
    The walls were powder blue. My little bed was covered with a comforter decorated with Winnie-the-Pooh characters. There were at least a half-dozen stuffed animals on the bed.
    On the walls were framed cels from Disney movies like
The Little Mermaid, 101 Dalmatians,
and
Lady and the Tramp.
    There was a Mickey Mouse dresser with Mickey stenciled onto the drawers, and a Donald Duck entertainment center.
    There were tables on either side of my bed, one with the image of Aladdin and the other with the Genie.
    I later found out that Disney had donated most of the furniture and even the highly valuable cels because the room was to be featured in
Home and Style
magazine.
    There was a huge treasure chest that Greta opened, revealing dozens of toys.
    “And look at this, Joey,” Greta said enthusiastically through Hana.
    Greta turned off the light: the entire ceiling glowed with stars. Even though I was amazed, I was determined not to like anything about my new home, so I kept my pout on.
    After a moment, Greta flipped the light back on.
    Robert finally set me down on the floor. “Do you like your room?” Hana translated for Robert.
    I ignored the question, sat on the
Song of the South
rug in the middle of the room, and opened my shoe box. One by one I took out the photographs of my mother, father, and sister; the top; the hand-carved animals; the tourist-shop snow globe of Dubrovnik; and the tiny metal fire engine and placed them on the rug in front of me.
    Greta tried to remove my old clothes and get me into my brand-new Goofy pajamas, but I refused to let her. She finally gave up and left the room, along with Robert, leaving Hana to get me changed, washed up, and into bed. Robert and Greta then came back into the room and attempted to kiss me goodnight, but I flopped onto my stomach and buried my head beneath my pillow.
    When I awoke after my first night in the house in Bel-Air, the pictures of my mother, father, and sister, along with my old toys, had been placed on the Aladdin table on the right side of my bed. On the Genie table, there was a picture of Robert and Greta and me taken in Dubrovnik. In the photo, Greta and Robert wore movie-star smiles, while I had a surprised look on my face, like the photographer had made flowers appear in one hand while he snapped the picture with the other—which was exactly what he had done to distract me from crying.
    I knocked the picture of me with Robert and Greta onto the floor. I then looked around for my shoe box. I wasn’t planning on staying in this house and wanted to be ready when my real mother and father came back from heaven, or wherever they were, to take me home. It wasn’t anywhere in the room, so I took the long journey down the stairs and screamed “box” in Croatian over and over again.
    Greta came running down the stairs in her robe and found me trying to open the front door. I don’t know why I was doing that. I guess I thought I might find the box that had transported my possessions outside. Or maybe I just wanted to