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stretch in all directions, until the bright blue outfield walls got in the way in the distance.
    They had tremendous seats that day, five rows behind the Mets dugout. Not only did all the actionseem as if it were right in front of him, close enough to reach out and touch, it was also as if Nick were
hearing
baseball for the first time. Or at least in a way he never had before, hearing the pop of the ball in the catcher’s mitt and the knock of the ball on a wood bat, sounds Nick had never heard in person before. When a hitter really connected on a pitch, it was as if a firecracker had gone off right next to him.
    It was a great game, back and forth the whole day, the Mets leading, and then the Braves leading, and the Mets finally tying them in the bottom of the ninth. At that point it became a perfect day for Nick, because the game went into extra innings, and a day that he never wanted to end wasn’t over yet.
    Sitting there behind the dugout, trying to keep score the way Mr. Wells had shown him, wearing the Mets cap Mr. Wells had bought for him at one of the souvenir stands, Nick didn’t know what he wanted more, for the Mets to win or for the game to keep going.
    The Mets finally did win, in the bottom of the thirteenth inning on a Mike Piazza home run, the Mets catcher having enough left to hit one outeven after catching all those innings. When the ball cleared the left-field wall by a mile and ended up in what Mr. Wells explained was the “picnic area” out there, Nick stood and yelled his head off with the rest of the 50,000 fans.
    But even as he did, there was a part of him that almost felt like crying, because the game being over meant that it was time for him to leave, time for him to go back to the apartment on Elm Street in Riverdale.
    For a few hours, though, Nick had finally found two places where he knew he belonged:
    A ballpark and in that seat in the fifth row between Mr. and Mrs. Wells.
    He turned out to be half right.
    The next step was supposed to be a sleepover at their house in Connecticut.
    Nick never made it to Connecticut, at least not that time.
    The night before he was supposed to go, Nick carefully packed his duffel bag. Not just with the clothes he was going to wear, but his catcher’s mittas well, because Mr. Wells said they were going to play a
lot
of catch.
    And his Mets cap, which he’d pretty much been wearing nonstop since he’d gotten back from Shea Stadium.
    As they had left the ballpark that day, people still clapping and cheering and yelling on their way out of Shea and into the parking lots, Mr. Wells had told him not to worry—adults had been telling him that his whole life—that there were going to be a lot of trips to the ballpark like this.
    Except that morning he was supposed to go on the sleepover, he could tell something was wrong when he came down to breakfast, could see it in the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Boyd.
    Then they sat him down and explained that the Wellses had changed their minds.
    Nick didn’t cry in front of them, sitting between them on the living room couch, as much as he wanted to.
    He just said, “What did I do wrong?”
    Mrs. Boyd hugged him then, though Nick didn’t feel much like being hugged, and said, “Honey, youdidn’t do anything wrong. They just decided they want to adopt a newborn baby, if they can find one.”
    Nick said, “Nobody wanted
me
when I was a baby, and nobody wants me now,” and ran to his room.
    He cried there, spent the day in there with his comic books inside the world where things came out the way you wanted them to, even more than they did in baseball.
    He still loved baseball after that. Couldn’t
not
love baseball. And he still rooted for the Mets. And on TV when they’d show some foul ball landing behind the Mets dugout, he’d be able to pick out almost exactly where he had been sitting between Mr. and Mrs. Wells.
    It just wasn’t the perfect memory it was supposed to be. He’d been back to Shea a few times since, and