A brisk New England breeze made me draw my jacket tighter as we walked down Grove, just blocks from Yale's campus. Des said we arrived in a warm snap, but that didn't stop the chill. Roy warmed up the night with conversation. "Let's play a game." The offer hung in the air for just a moment before Des' exuberance leapt on it. "Botticelli," she blurted as her cold-reddened face sparked to life. The single word demanded more.

The warm air that poured out of The Koffee Shop’s doors matched the lighting inside. I remembered my money saving habits from The Grape and ordered only the house coffee. Roy began to outline the game's rules as I stirred the sugar into my steaming mug. I lifted the strip of recycled cardboard from my drink and concentrated fully on the explanation. The game works with one person as a central character. This person thinks of any person, past or present, real or fictional, and assumes that identity, giving everyone else only the last initial as a clue.

The rest of the group thinks of possible characters and frames a question to which the person in their head is the answer. This question is asked of the central player who is expected to answer, "No, I'm not," and finish the sentence with the name of the person the questioner has in mind, or some other person that fits the question. If the central player fails to provide a person, the questioner gets to ask one yes or no question about the character the central player is acting as. I squinted into my coffee as I tried to digest the complicated rules. Roy laughed at my effort and ran one hand through his mop of curly hair. "You'll learn as we play. I'll start. The letter is M." With this series of curt statements the game began.

Roy was right; learning was easy once immersed in the game. Only two questions had left Des' angular mouth before I was ready with my own: "Are you a material girl?" Roy's round cheeks rose into an impish grin at the question. He looked something like a monkey as he approached laughter, which seemed to be most of the time. "No, I'm not Madonna," he shot back. Too easy. Des rapped both hands on the table as she thought, radiating nervous energy into the surrounding air.

I rushed into the game with question after question. Mephistopheles was the final answer. It took a long and painful hunt, and it was Des, not I who finally guessed it, but I felt in the game. I had been on the trail the whole time. I was eager for round two. I didn't have to wait long. "My turn, my turn," Des yelped in her typical childlike manner. With that thought the answer came to me. The difference at Yale wasn't how smart everyone was. It wasn’t the great professors, the amazing academic reputation, or the endless array of resources there. It was desire. These people weren't just smart, they loved being smart. They were ready to revel in it, to roll around in the dirt with their intellects

The creaking of a door woke me from my restless sleep. Defensively, I pulled my body tight into the corner the bed made with the wall, concealing it next to the improvised liquor cabinet. Girls' voices trickled in incomprehensibly from the hall. All I could hear was Kate's harsh voice from weeks ago, "Are you alone?" Once unescorted meant a less than polite walk out of the dorm with Kate, the RA. Twice meant trouble. "Zach?" Mehra's voice let me slump back onto the baby blue sheets, relaxed.

Mehra pulled a scrunchie out of her long brown hair as she came around the corner to look at me. I stared up at her from under a fuzzy yellow blanket and an exhaustion induced daze. "How have you been?" her voice rang with sarcasm. I couldn't muster an answer, and she didn't need one. Staying awake for 30 hours might have paid Paul with finished homework, but my body was playing Peter, screaming at the injustice. Mehra knew my pain. She had worked through the night as well.

I pushed myself up off the bed and shook my head to clear it, letting my long curly hair obstruct my vision. I didn't have the energy, or even the desire, to push the hair back for an unobstructed view. An answer to Mehra's half-forgotten question pushed its way to the front of my mind. "Hungry," I said, almost like it was a realization, "I'm hungry. Let's order something." My thoughts dropped to my right-hand pocket and the nearly empty money-clip. It looked like a CatCard night. For delivery that could only mean Dominoes.

Mehra put Garth Brooks on the CD player as I sat on my dinner conclusion, reluctant to voice it. The country singer's twangy voice was oddly soothing. I don't listen to country, but Garth Brooks has always acted as a time machine, taking me back to the days of my mom's country phase. "I've got friends in low places, where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away. I'll be okay," bellowed out from small speakers. All I ever heard were lyrics, and his were great. They offered no answer to my current dilemma though. Pepperoni pizza swamped my mind as I looked across the room at the vegetarian on a perpetual diet.

I started to prepare for an already familiar pattern, gathering positive comments about her looks and weight. It wasn't a hard task; she's a beautiful girl. Fully armed, I stepped into battle. "You don't want pizza, do you?" The suggestion had to hide within its own words. It was a waste of my breath. Even if she could be coaxed into pizza, I'd be stuck eating cheese, with mushrooms if I was lucky. Waiting, I played the soft blanket back and forth between my thumb and first two fingers. The color was hideous, a pale and lifeless yellow, but the inviting fuzz more than made up for it. Mehra stepped over a laundry basket on her way from the stereo to the kitchen area and dodged the pizza issue just as delicately. "I'm just going to cook some pasta. Call Kristi; she'll split a pizza with you."

Something in me wouldn't relent, almost like I was searching for a fight. "Pasta, with what?" I asked, knowing the answer. It was just pasta. Maybe a light sauce and a few greens. Mehra held the box up as an answer. That's a meal?" I asked with mock incredulity, pushing for no reason. This time I found a button. Fatigu-stretched nerves snapped at my prodding. Mehra waved the box of uncooked pasta in my face.

"This," she exclaimed, with an extra shake of the box, "Is so much better as a meal than the flesh of a dead animal." I listened to her airy voice linger on 'so' for emphasis. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, not quite obvious enough to be joking, but enough to be noticed. Her breaths came slow and with obvious effort. A physique forced into calmness wasn't enough to contain the building rage. "I don't want to have this fight with you right now, Zach," she told me, as though cautioning a child.

I studied her face carefully, unsure what to make of such a strong reaction. Something big, something hidden deep inside Mehra, was brushing the surface here. Electricity seemed to arc along the surface of her skin, betraying the power of what lay beneath. Like a physicist delving into surprising experimental data, I probed for further information. "Okay," I agreed, "no fighting. I just want to know though, what are your basic reasons for being a vegetarian, not the arguments, not all the supporting facts, just the basic reasons?" I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back on the soft green study pillow that always sat on Sarah's bed. It was Mehra's turn. My eyes focused on her and all my critical thinking facilities started to click on, ready to analyze her arguments. I didn't stop to think at the time that analyze is often synonymous with pick apart and critical thinking often leans to the merely critical.

Mehra's eyes shifted upward and left as she collected her thoughts. She seemed to be rehearsing a pre-written speech in her head. The list that followed fit this image completely. It felt lifeless and artificial. "There's the cruelty to animals thing, the health issue, the environmental issue-" I don't remember exactly how far she got before I interjected. I just remember what followed. "That's it Zach," she yelled accusingly. "That's why I hate talking about this shit with you! Every time I say something like this you have these questions I can’t answer, and you say things that sound perfect, and everything I say sounds stupid. And it pisses me off because I know what I'm saying, but it doesn't matter when all the words come out retarded." The voice that started out strong and attacking shifted to a wavering and almost pitiful tone.

Now it was my turn to disprove her statement. This time it wasn't through a logical argument. This time I just sat and sputtered. I watched someone I care about start to cry and couldn't put forth a simple sentence as a dam against the tears. Not even a single sandbag would make its way from my brain to my mouth. I wrapped one arm around her shoulders and began a sentence that would never end. "Honey . . ." I trailed off, still empty of anything to say. At least the address, a term of endearment, was out there. At least there was some sign of an attempt.

The crying subsided rapidly to soft sniffles in a nose that had been sniffing all day long. Finally, with the raw emotion out of my face, I started to put together a response. "It's not meant like that. It's not me being better or smarter than you. I argue like that with you because I respect you, because I feel like you’re one of the people who can argue back, who deserves to hear everything I've got and can even throw it back at me." The idea rang like one I had written only days earlier in a paper on physics. "This violent attack is not a judgment on the theory or the person proposing it. On the contrary, the better sounding and more promising a theory is, the more viciously it will be set upon by the field of physicists." That was my attack on Mehra. She was someone who passed all the preliminary tests easily. Only the tough ones remained, so that was what I threw at her.

Some subtle change came over Mehra's face. The sadness didn't leave entirely, but a light entered her eyes. It certainly wasn't joy. Appreciation maybe. "Thank you," was all she said in a raspy half-whisper. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to thank her for challenging me, for making me agonize over every word, knowing she would attack the semantics and logic of my arguments just a viciously as I would hers. I wanted to thank her for being a vegetarian, for rejecting traditional western thought, for doing everything opposite me. Around her I found myself constantly voicing some of my favorite words, "I never thought about it that way." With that she turned back to the microwave, vegetarian pasta in hand. The step away seemed to signal the end of the conversation.

I think the stress we put on each other is part of what has brought us so close. We both over analyze everything we come in contact with. We pick each other to bits and expect the same in return. We can start with a simple debate and end up arguing for hours, finishing on a topic miles from our origin and still without a conclusion. The difficulty of the fight makes winning even more fun though. By winning I don't mean convincing Mehra that I'm right. Winning with Mehra is reaching an agreement. She laughed at me when I told her that there was nothing more enjoyable than having a debate with her and coming to an agreement. "No guy has ever said that to me," she said. I wasn't surprised. When we agree it's perfect though. We both know that the agreement is complete, that after pounding on ideas and ripping them to shreds we've really reached an understanding. That's my goal in life: understanding.

Mehra read over the pasta box and picked up a squat rectangular Tupperware. "Did you ever think maybe there's a reason for you not going to an Ivy League?" she asked, turning my flow of thoughts on its head.

"I-"

"Hold on, I have to get some water," she interjected. Without a second thought she stepped out the door and into the hallway, Tupperware in hand, leaving me stuck mid-sentence and mid-thought. I needed the time though. I didn't really have a good answer for her.

"You know," she resumed without pause upon reentering, "that you're Yale material. I know you're Yale material. But you're not there. There has to be some reason." She stirred dry pasta into her water as her words stirred old thoughts. I'd considered it before. I'd considered it reading the hurtful meaning behind the overly-polite words of the rejection letters. I'd considered it with my face buried into the black covered pillow on my futon, suppressing sobs. I'd considered it during phone calls with Des, disregarding the long-distance bill to talk to a friend who had succeeded where I hadn’t.

"Yeah," I began hesitantly, "I've thought about it a lot." I shifted nervously to the edge of the bed. "I thought of every possible reason, from the grandest to the most minute. Maybe I'm supposed to learn something by the failure, by being here. Maybe I'll be a better and more successful person for it. Or maybe it's something tiny and personal. Maybe I'm here to meet you, to be around Sarah. But all those reasons just don’t do it for me. I wanted them to be true for so long. I wanted to just say, 'Oh yeah, that explains why God didn't have me go to Yale,' but that kind of explanation never came. I think there could have been a reason, but in the end I think it was just that I fucked up. I was meant to be there, and I blew it. That's where I belong."

Mehra cocked her head to the side in consternation. I looked up pathetically, having just admitted my greatest personal failure. She didn’'t seem to understand the strength of my feelings. "But why does it matter? Is it really that much different there? Why'd you want to go there so badly?"

Mehra closed the door to her room, shutting us off from the rest of the world, as I struggled to answer her question. The room was just a bit cooler than comfortable, but I cuddled into the blankets rather than reach for the open window. My voice shook as I pawed around the nebulous idea in front of me. The draw of Yale wasn't something I could label easily, but a brief moment came to mind. Mehra squatted in front of me. One of her hands dropped onto mine as I related my story of discovering other intellectuals in a New Haven coffee shop. "Playing that game," I voiced hesitantly, "I worried for an instant that everyone would be talking over my head." I focused on Mehra's eyes as I spoke. All the light in the room seemed to gather in them and dance while we talked. "That, that fear of inadequacy, felt better than I could have imagined. I wasn't worried about talking down to them. I got over being worried about being inferior and, maybe for the first time in my life, just felt average."

My eyes dropped to the floor, shamed by my arrogance. The smell of garlic reminded me that Mehra had been cooking pasta before we started talking, that the real world still existed outside of our exchange. Mehra returned from the microwave, lifting a steaming bite of noodle and alfredo sauce to her lips, while her eyes stayed locked on mine. The real world certainly existed, but the focus was here, with us, between us. "But you're not-" "But I want to be," my quick words cut her short, bringing a frustrated curl to her chocolate face. "I want to be average."

"Why?" she asked, puzzled. "Why not be the best?" My mind drifted back nine months, searching for an explanation.

It was tough to explain to a state-championship gymnast the burden of always being the best. She had been there and didn't appear too encumbered. Somehow I voiced the difference though, that mental gymnastics were in some fundamental way different from every other kind, that they pervade your life in a way nothing else does. Gymnastics shows up in gymnastics. Maybe it makes a cameo in a few other athletic events. Something about the way my mind works, the relentless analytical process I can't reign in even when I try, forces its way into every conversation, every human interaction. At Yale I met the people who were ready to follow me on the uneven bars of my mind and show me up. Not just the people who could, the people who wanted to.

After I pressed all these thoughts into something resembling spoken English, Mehra had only one thing to say: Teach me how to play the game. I'm not sure how aware she was of my elation. I'm not sure how much she really wanted to play and how much she could see how badly I wanted someone to play with. Either way I won though. If she really wanted to, I had found the kind of peer I had been searching for. If it was all contrived for me, perhaps I had found something better, a friend who isn't always everything I'm looking for, but will always strive to be.