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responded. I was a very good listener.
    “He’s going to ask you what you think of all this. And you’re going to say: ‘I want to be an astronaut.’ Okay, say it back to me.”
    “I really want to be an astronaut,” I said.
    “That’s right,” Robert said.
    “No. I
really
want to be an astronaut.” I really did.
    “Great,” Robert said, “and after you tell him you want to be an astronaut, he’s going to ask you why.”
    “I know,” I said. “And I’m going to say, ‘Because I want to go to Mars.’”
    “That’s great, Joe,” Robert said, giving me a proud pat on the head.
    On the news that night, you could see me saying my line, followed by the NASA chief saying the lines he’d also rehearsed: “Maybe it takes a child from a country that was stripped of its dreams to remind all of us of the American dream of exploring space. Hopefully, Joe, with a little help from Congress, you can one day live your dream.”
    “You
are
living a lot of kids’ dream life,” Tom said after I’d finished the story. We were walking across the Mall to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
    I knew Tom was right, but that was the thing: like a dream, my life never seemed quite real. I often wondered if I’d have felt this way if I had been adopted at two instead of three; then I might not have had any memory of my real parents and sister, and if I didn’t have those memories, maybe I would call Robert Dad and Greta Mom. Or what if my adoptive parents were not two of the biggest movie stars in the world? What would my life be like then?
    “You’re not so different,” Tom said kindly, reading my thoughts. He pointed to the wall as we walked alongside it, looking at the names of those who had died in the war in Vietnam.
    “Everyone here was someone’s father or son or husband.” He came to a stop, then reached out toward the wall and touched an engraved name: JOHN DOLAN .
    “I was five when he died. He was a helicopter pilot,” Tom said quietly.
    There was a ton of questions I wanted to ask him: Do you remember him much? How did it happen? What was it like at home after you found out? But I didn’t ask him anything. If there had been a wall in Dubrovnik for men and women who had died in the war in Croatia and I had been looking at the names of my mom, dad, and sister, I think I just would have wanted a moment alone with them.
    Because the truth of the matter was, no matter how many opportunities I’d been given by living with Robert, Greta, and Guava, I always felt like an outsider with them; I didn’t belong and I didn’t want to belong. I wanted my real family back.

    My trophy-kid duties were light that evening. It was Robert’s night to be honored; I was just there to help project the image of a happy family.
    Tom sat next to me at the awards dinner and seemed to enjoy the whole thing. Robert and Greta looked like royalty, and Guava looked bored beyond belief. Her restless, swinging legs constantly kicked me under the table. Other award recipients that night were a former basketball player, a chemist, a diplomat, a TV talk-show host, and an economist. But all I kept thinking about was that moment at the wall when Tom had reached out and touched the engraved name of his father.
    Robert had an important meeting with a studio chief the next day, so we flew back to L.A. on the red-eye. I liked flying at night. It was quiet on the plane, and there was something about being in all that blackness so far off the ground that made me feel like anything was possible.
    I was happy that Tom had taken the trip with us. There were so many things I wanted to tell him now that I was beginning to trust that he’d understand. But going to the Vietnam Memorial seemed to have taken a lot out of him, and he fell asleep almost immediately after the plane took off. Maybe that was for the best. If I’d told him what I really wanted to tell him, he might have thought I was crazy, or worse, he might have pitied me—and that