He had a degree from Harvard, and he clung to this knowledge like a lamppost in a blizzard. It was proof that he actually existed, that he had actually accomplished something, anything, instead of always having been invisible. It was true that he worked very hard at being invisible. At Harvard, it was outrageously easy: he avoided other people's spheres of cognizance, flitting in and out of their attention like a shadow that nobody could ever quite place. He was a professional, a veteran of all those years of elementary school, when teachers, then counselors and misguided psychologists, poked and prodded at him, forcing him to convince them that he was quite all right. No one knew what to make of the pensive little boy. They could feel his hidden energy, his inner fortitude, but perhaps that was just what his parents said to each other to help themselves sleep at night. He could remember his mother holding his acceptance letter, face seemingly full of joy. But her relief showed when she said, "I knew you were smart after all." He didn't bother to correct her, to explain that it didn't have anything to do with intelligence, he was just rather good at giving people what they wanted and wrapping himself up so tightly that not even a finger peeked through. He figured that his roommate noticed. They had seemed to get along marvelously at first, even if he was a little bit distant, the camaraderie a little bit forced. But his roommate wasn't stupid. He could tell that the pensive young man seemed to be nothing but an empty shell, his real soul hundreds of miles away, his heart never in those quiet little laughs that he made. Even if his roommate never said anything, even if he never put his finger on exactly what it was, he still knew. But then again, maybe his roommate had never noticed, and simply lost interest in him before moving away to live in a frat house. Maybe he was just saying that to trick himself into thinking he wasn't quite so alone. It surely helped him sleep at night. It was the rain. When it rained, he always felt unbearably lonely, a long-suppressed creature rising up in his mind. And he remembered that one thing. That one incident which he really couldn't figure out no matter how many times he thought about it, the one time he was convinced that someone looked right through him and saw the miserable, furless, shriveled thing within. He first noticed her when she was stapling posters onto one of the bulletin boards. It was a bright pink poster, seemingly blank. They locked eyes for a second and then she looked away. In the middle of the night, he came to the bulletin board and carefully took the poster down, and carried it back to his dorm. He pored over it the whole night. He noticed that it was possible the microscopic markings on it made a sort of code. Well, it had to. Why else would someone put a blank poster on the wall? At six in the morning, he slipped out, past the rooms of people sleeping off their hangovers, through the dark maroon buildings of campus until he reached the bulletin board. He carefully replaced the poster, making sure to line up the thumbtack holes. It was a brilliant morning, the rising sun casting soft pink undertones to the sparse clouds. Today, he felt alive. For the next few weeks, he saw her code everywhere: in her mismatched socks, the way she would tap out a hesitant rhythm on her desk during class, the chain of charms on her bag that were never the same two days in a row. He thought that maybe he was looking too much into it, but there was a certain air to her, a certain thoughtfulness and eccentricity that made him convinced that her clues were intentional. After meticulous piecing together all of the clues he found, he saw that they pointed to a certain date and time. A time that was a rather bad time for him to be out in public. There were too many people walking around Harvard Square, all of them with people to meet and places to be. But this time, he had someone to meet, too. He was struck by the sudden realization that he would end up marrying this girl, that this would be a story they would tell their grandchildren. He felt a little bit silly, but that didn't stop him from standing a little straighter, picking his feet up slightly higher from the ground. She was waiting by the gate. She glanced at her watch, and he was suddenly aware that he was ten minutes late. Or maybe even later, if his calculations had been off. He felt a little guilty, and thought about turning around and heading back home. But she was standing there, waiting, so he walked up and stood next to her. He carefully looked off into the distance, as passersby passed by too close to him. Two charged minutes later, she spoke. Hey, she said. He just looked at her. A flash of understanding sparked behind her eyes, and she was silent for a bit. Finally, she said, Well, I guess my date isn't coming. Oh well, I thought maybe she was just late. I'm hungry. Do you want to grab something to eat with me? He tried to speak but his voice failed, and he just nodded. He followed her mutely across the street, and they walked into the closest shop, which was loud with laughter and conversation. They sat there, silently eating their food. Her expression was so full of meaning, of expectation, that it convinced him that she was about to declare her undying love for him. She had set up such an intricate puzzle for him, and he had figured it out. They were two of a kind. She knew what it was like to be sensitive, pensive in a world that was too loud and too obscene. She saw in him the same alien piece that she herself had, and she made a shot in the dark that he had recognized. They were two kindred spirits, united across the chasm of mundanity... Any moment now, she would say all of this, and more, and then they could fill up that chasm with everything that they had to say to each other, and they both wouldn't be quite so alone. But instead she said nothing. She finished eating, and stood up. Thanks for your company, she said, terribly politely. She seemed disappointed. He knew that he should've said something. She had probably been waiting for him to declare his awareness of her intentions, waiting for him to tell her the story of all those clues he painstakingly stitched together; but he had said nothing. She could only conclude that he was just another sad little boy, a little boy with nothing to do, nobody to meet on a balmy Sunday evening. She could only conclude that their meeting was just a dumb coincidence. That in fact, he wasn't the one she was waiting for. All because he was too weak to say anything. He knew that he had failed the test at the last step, and he could only stare as his world closed in on him. He was now completely sure that he was doomed to spend his whole life alone in a dark, dreary place. He realized that, after all that he had done, his soul simply wasn't developed enough to function without any of his masks. He had kept it out of the sunlight for too long, and it was now shriveled and anemic, a hopeless failure. These were all thoughts that he had again, and again, as he tried to imagine what he should've said, what he could've done instead of staying silent. But this time, as he remembered all this, a new realization hit him: Maybe, she had never left a message for him, maybe he had just, by chance, stumbled upon her as she was waiting for someone else, maybe that, really, she was no one special, and everything was just a figment of his imagination. This was a familiar road for his mind to tread, but never like this, never about her. He tried to fight it. leave me this my one memory, he beseeched, but it was no use. He could feel it slipping away, like the cold rain slithering in rivulets into the sewers. i am sure she was waiting for me, he tried again, but he knew it wasn't true. For better or worse, he found that one strange thing about this memory, the thing that made it stick out like a nail. It was that this memory hadn't lined up to his pessimistic, lonely worldview. And now that he could see the traces of iron fibers within the memory, could see the way to cement his loneliness, it lined up cleanly with the magnet within his mind. And he was rather alone again, sitting in a dark room with the rain pouring outside, with nothing at all to keep him company.