The Leftovers

double the size of the previous one. The most recent had been at Keuka College, and it had been thrilling to see the way he connected with a young audience. The hugging session lasted almost two hours; when it was over, he was dripping wet, barely able to stand, a fighter who’d gone the distance.
    “I have some friends who live off campus,” Hubbs told him. “If you want, you can probably crash there for a few days.”
    Tom packed his things, drained his bank account, and slipped out of the dorm on Friday night. When his parents showed up the next day, all they found were some books, a disconnected printer, and an unmade bed, along with a letter in which Tom told them a little about Mr. Gilchrest and apologized for letting them down. He told them that he would be traveling for a while, and promised to keep in touch via e-mail.
    “I’m sorry,” he wrote. “This is a really confusing time for me. But there are some things I need to figure out on my own, and I hope you’ll respect my decision.”
    *   *   *
    HE STAYED with Hubbs’s buddies through the end of the semester, then sublet their apartment when they headed home for summer vacation. Hubbs moved in with him; they got hired as detailers at a car dealership and did volunteer work for Mr. Gilchrest in their spare time, passing out leaflets, setting up folding chairs, collecting addresses for an e-mail list, whatever he needed.
    That summer things really started to take off. Someone posted a clip of Mr. Gilchrest on YouTube—it was tagged I AM A SPONGE FOR YOUR PAIN —and it went viral. The crowds at his lectures grew bigger, the invitations to speak more frequent. By September, he was renting a mothballed Episcopal church in Rochester, holding marathon Hugfests every Saturday and Sunday morning. Tom and Hubbs sometimes manned the merch table in the lobby, selling lecture DVDs, T-shirts—the most popular one said GIVE IT TO ME on the front, and I CAN TAKE IT on the back—and a self-published paperback memoir entitled A Father’s Love.
    Mr. Gilchrest traveled a lot that fall—it was the first anniversary of the Sudden Departure—giving lectures all over the country. Tom and Hubbs were among the volunteers who drove him to and from the airport, getting to know him as a person, gradually earning his trust. When the organization began expanding that spring, Mr. Gilchrest asked the two of them to run the Boston chapter, organizing and promoting a multi-campus speaking tour and doing whatever else they saw fit to increase awareness among the local college population of what he’d begun calling the Healing Hug Movement. It was exhilarating to be given so much responsibility, to have gotten in on the ground floor of a phenomenon that had taken off so unexpectedly—like working at an Internet start-up back in the day, Tom thought—but also a little dizzying, everything growing so quickly, shooting off in so many different directions at once.
    During that first summer in Boston, Tom and Hubbs began hearing disturbing rumors from people they knew back at the Rochester headquarters. Mr. Gilchrest was changing, they said, letting the fame go to his head. He’d bought a fancy car, started wearing different clothes, and was paying a little too much attention to the adoring young women and teenage girls who lined up to hug him. He’d apparently begun calling himself “Holy Wayne” and hinting about some sort of special relationship with God. On a couple of occasions, he had referred to Jesus as his brother.
    When he arrived in September to give his first lecture to a packed house at Northeastern, Tom could see that it was true. Mr. Gilchrest was a new man. The heartbroken father in the shabby suit was gone, replaced by a rock star in sunglasses and a tight black T-shirt. When he greeted Tom and Hubbs there was an imperious coolness in his voice, as if they were simply hired help, rather than devoted followers. He instructed them to give backstage passes to any cute girls who seemed promising, “especially if they’re Chinese or Indian or like that.” Onstage, he didn’t just offer hugs and sympathy; he spoke of accepting a God-given mission to fix the world, to somehow undo the damage caused by the Sudden Departure. The details remained vague, he explained, not because he was holding out, but because he himself didn’t know them all yet. They were coming to him piecemeal, in a series of visionary dreams.
    “Stay tuned,” he told the audience.