He next saw Sofia. She was wearing her green military jacket, which suited her militant personality. No cause was too trivial for Sofia. She approached relationships with the same fire and passion. She’d been in love no less than six times freshman year, with Matt talking her down from every breakup. Unsurprisingly, she looked like she’d taken the news the hardest. Her eye makeup was raccooned from tears, her long auburn hair a mess. Sofia’s body shuddered when she hugged him. It caused Matt’s to shudder as well.

Curtis was next. He was the brains of the group. He’d won the National Spelling Bee at nine, the second Black kid to ever win the competition, the first from the atrocious Mississippi public school system. He had a near perfect SAT score and been offered scholarships from every Ivy. He’d accepted NYU not for academic reasons, but because it was the only school that had a congregation of his small, obscure religious sect nearby. After classes all day, he attended services two hours every other night. He didn’t use alcohol, didn’t take drugs, didn’t swear, and didn’t even drink caffeine. And he’d struggled with the loose ways of NYU. He and Matt had long talks late at night about religion and Curtis’s battles with temptation. Matt had told him that he needed to have faith in his faith.

“I’m praying for you, my friend,” Curtis said as he pulled him into a hug.

“I know you are,” Matt said, his voice breaking. “I think I need it.”

The only one missing was Ganesh. He was always the loner of the group. In his contradictory way, he loved a crowd but kept everyone at a distance.

Matt surveyed this group of people he loved. On the exterior, each was objectively attractive. He could almost imagine them in a remake of Felicity (a reference only Kala would get), good-looking NYU students out to take on the world. But like life, each was more complicated. Ganesh called their group the “Island of Misfit Toys.” Sofia chided him, since the reference was from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which she thought was racist and homophobic for reasons Matt couldn’t comprehend.

At last, Matt said to the group, “Thank you for coming. It means a lot.”

There was a chorus of we’re here for you, whatever you need, and the like.

“If you don’t mind, I’d love to get a shower and some rest.…”

The group fumbled around, collecting their things. They had another procession of hugs at the door.

Jane hung back. After the last mourner departed, she said, “Where have you been? I was worried. I called everywhere, and you weren’t answering your phone and Ganesh ignored my texts and—”

“I’ll tell you all about it. But I could use a little time to myself.”

Jane’s face crumpled. “Matt, I would’ve never— If I knew, I wouldn’t have—”

“I know. It’s okay.” He waited by the door, signaling that she should go. He didn’t want to do this now.

“It was a mistake,” she said.

Matt gave a fleeting smile. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Let’s talk.” It was plain she wasn’t leaving.

Just a day ago he’d been mildly devastated that they were through. But after what had happened, he saw things as they were. Matt and Jane were never going to make it. His Rubin friends were surprised it had lasted a year. Shit, Matt was surprised it had taken Jane so long to realize he was a much bigger project than she’d anticipated. And she’d said some mean things in the end: that he was a mess. That he’d never be anything if he didn’t start focusing. On school. On her. That he needed to see someone about his anger at his father. At his brother. That after he’d pummeled that frat boy, she was afraid of him.

The worst part was that she’d been right about all of it, and now none of it mattered.

“Matthew, please, talk to me.”

She followed him as he went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She watched as he removed Ganesh’s ridiculously large clothes. He’d seen Jane twice stop herself from asking about the getup. He stepped into the stall and let the hot water beat down on his face. Through the foggy shower door, he saw Jane’s silhouette disappear.

After toweling himself off, he returned to the room. Jane was sitting on the bed, her mouth downturned.

“Are you going to talk to me?” she said, watching him throw on some jeans and a T-shirt.

“I’m not sure what there is to say.”

He pulled a duffel from under the bed, and began stuffing clothes into the bag. He searched the dresser for the small document pouch, the one his mother had made for him. It held things grown-ups needed—his social security card, passport, birth certificate. It was also where Mom had tucked away the emergency credit card. When the pouch wasn’t in plain view, Matt yanked the drawer from the frame and dumped it on the floor. And there it was, the letter-size, expandable pouch. He scooped it up.

“What are you— Where are you going?” Jane asked as he stalked to the door.

“To get my family.”

CHAPTER 11

Matt stormed out of the building, Jane calling after him. He pushed past the photographers and hailed a cab to LaGuardia. In the back, he bumped around on the cracked vinyl seat for a long while, staring out at nothing. The closing scene from Michael Clayton. The cab slammed the brakes hard, then swerved around a car that had cut them off, the cabbie cursing out the window.

If they crashed, Matt realized, few people would really care. Jane would make a show of how upset she was, and sure, the gang from Rubin Hall would get together, tell a few stories, give some toasts to Matt Pine. But he’d soon become an afterthought. Talked about in the larger context of bad luck or family curses or famous tragedies. One Pine wrongfully locked up for murder, four Pines killed in a freak accident while on vacation, and the other one—what was his name?—dead in a car wreck on the way to the airport to claim the bodies of his deceased family members. They’d say seize the day lest you suffer the fate of the Pines.

Not today, he thought as the cab yanked to a stop outside the airport terminal. Inside, he gave the dour-faced airline worker the confirmation number the FBI agent had given him, and retrieved his ticket. He then found an ATM and breathed a sigh of relief when, after several tries, he remembered the PIN for the emergency credit card: 1010. His parents’ default passcode, October 10, the month and day they’d met in college. Another surge of grief consumed him. Pocketing the five hundred dollars, he then submitted to the torture of modern air travel—long lines, shoes off, no liquids—and soon he was at his gate, the duffel draped over his shoulder.

Matt sat in the chair of molded plastic for a long while, staring blankly out the large windows onto the tarmac. The planes lifted off and landed in the morning sun. Thousands and thousands of strangers who would never cross paths again, intersecting at this one point in time. Grains of sand at the beach. Ants on a hill. He needed to shake the morbid thoughts.

By nine thirty, the gate was getting crowded. It was then Matt had the feeling that someone was watching him. He scanned the crowd—the businessmen yacking on cell phones, the college kids with neck pillows, the rare traveler dressed to the nines amid the sloppy masses—but he didn’t see the culprit. But he had no doubt he was being watched. He knew the feeling.

He’d refused to participate in the documentary, but he couldn’t escape the family photos and old news footage sprinkled over ten dramatic episodes set against a haunting score heavy on cello and violin. After it aired, people would often give him the Do I know you from somewhere? look. The true believers, the Danny Pine faithful, made the connection, and Matt would have to turn down selfies or apologize that he wasn’t really a hugger. He’d unwillingly become part of a national mystery, a game of Clue where journalists—and internet detectives—came up with elaborate theories and spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to prove whodunit.

The show had struck a chord. A beautiful young girl disfigured in the most gruesome way. The all-American boy wrongfully accused. A small town painted in the worst kind of light—and, of course, the suspects overlooked.

The documentary pointed to one in particular, Bobby Ray Hayes. He was in prison for killing several young women. He’d sexually assaulted and murdered the girls, then smashed in their skulls with large rocks. The media uncreatively called him “the Smasher.” Depending on where you were from, you’d call the Hayes clan white trash or hillbillies or rednecks. After the documentary, they were called that and then some. And the youngest in the brood—a shark-eyed menace named Bobby Ray—was straight out of central casting as a creepy killer of women.

Matt spotted a man in an expensive-looking suit pretending not to look at him. The guy fit the profile. Danny Pine’s “fans” were a decidedly well-heeled crowd, people who couldn’t wrap their heads around a wrongful conviction, oblivious to how often it happened to the poor. Spend a few minutes with Matt’s father, and he’d give you an earful about the 2,852 individuals on the National Registry of Exonerations who’d collectively spent 23,540 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

“Matthew,” a voice said from behind him. It was the FBI agent. Keller.

“Hey,” he said.

“I heard you had some excitement this morning,” Agent Keller said.