The Answer

We spend the next few days shuttling from one meeting and training session to another. We learn to recognize the signs of eating disorders and the signs of depression; to avoid sexual assault by travelling in groups; to understand that no means no; to squeeze the tip of the condom before rolling it on; to avoid muggings by travelling in groups; to give homeless people vouchers for food instead of money; to speak to our RAs if we feel angry, hurt, lost, anorexic, depressed or sexually assaulted; to avoid unpleasant encounters with roving townies by travelling in groups. Rafael isn't anywhere to be seen, and his name never comes up in any conversation, not even the ones you might expect: This guy, across the hall? You wouldn't believe it, he's some kind of super-orthodox Muslim.

A week later, when I come upon him staring into a plate of green beans and baked fish in the Trumbull dining hall, I've forgotten him altogether. He raises his head just as I'm scanning the tables, looking for a familiar face, and our eyes meet. By accident. He's sitting alone, and instantly I know—we both know—it would be unforgivably rude for me not to join him, though I'm in a hurry and the last thing I want is to get involved.

I know you, he says, when I introduce myself again. We met the first day. On the grass. He doesn't smile, but gives me a tiny nod, a slight inclining of the head. Isaac is a very interesting name, he says. Not everyone would choose that name.

Yeah. A little too Biblical. I went through a stage of trying to get people to call me Zack, but there were two other Zacks in my class.

A slight tightening at the corners of his eyes, as if I've slipped out of focus.

And the funny thing, I say, is that my town is mostly Jewish, and my high school was mostly Jewish, but I'm the one named Isaac.

He cuts a chunk of scrod with his fork and lifts it up, picking away the bones carefully. I assume you know the story of Ibrahim and the sacrifice, he says. The Jewish-Christian version. He unfolds his napkin carefully, as if it were an old document, a tattered map from the glove box, and uses one corner of it to wipe his mouth. But you haven't heard the Muslim version.

No.

Pushing his plate aside, he makes a V with his hands on the tabletop. Ibrahim has two sons, he says. Isaac and Ismail. So God—Allah—asks him to make this sacrifice, and when Ibrahim agrees, Allah says, This son, who you were willing to sacrifice, he will be the father of the chosen people.

And the sons of the other are the outcasts. The sons of Ishmael.

Right. A broad smile. Only Ismail is the chosen one, and Isaac is the outcast.

Well, that's only one way of looking at it, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be about winners and losers.

Let me guess, he says, expressionless, spearing beans with his fork. Your parents must be Episcopalians.

Unitarians.

And one of them is a doctor. At least.

I follow his eyes to my backpack, sitting in the chair next to me, printed with a lime-green logo: zocor^™ philotelenol hydrozolate.

My mother's a dermatologist. And?

As if satisfied, in some obscure way, he looks up at the rafters of the dining hall, at the shields with heraldic crests and Latin mottoes underneath the leaded-glass windows, and nods distractedly. Give me a straight answer, I want to say to him. I've already picked my way through my own plate of overcooked fettuccine and too-sweet tomato sauce; and it's time for me to consider the other options: the salad bar, the bagel bar, another peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, a merciful quick escape to the library.

So you see, he says, the winners have many options. They can choose to feel about themselves however they want. They can even choose not to be winners any more.