Chapter 1

I was feeling rotten. I often felt that way in this sort of heavy maths lecture, as if my brains were being slowly cooked from too much thinking. This time was different though. I felt physically unwell, and I hoped it wasn't something serious. As I tried to focus on the task at hand, I reflexively pushed my glasses back up my nose, and tried to ignore my headache.

Thirty dreary minutes later when the lesson was over, my headache was worse than ever. I packed my things up and headed out, following my friend Natalie.

Though we were both 19 years old, Nat was everything I wasn't. She was a gorgeous sexy blond with a killer figure. I was the lank haired, brunette, bespectacled girl, with a bad complexion and the figure of a twelve year old, the ugly shy nerd girl to her blond bombshell.

Despite appearances Nat was far from a dumb bimbo, like me she was in the first year of studying for a four year masters engineering degree, which has some fairly tough entry criteria. Since we were on the same course and there were relatively few girls. we were roommate Initially it seemed we were poorly matched, but somehow we had hit it off and became best friends.

Since then we'd done a lot together, and Nat was always trying to help me be more sociable. I found going out with her could be depressing, as the only reason guys would talk to me was to get to her. They seemed to be operating under the assumption that if they could befriend the ugly roommate they had a better crack at my sexy friend. Once we'd tried double dating. The guy her date brought took one look at me and then ignored me, he just sat there drinking for the rest of the evening. He got so drunk he called me an ugly troll and threw up on me. I cried myself to sleep that night and refused to go out like that again. That experience had recently put me off going out on dates at all, even without Nat there stealing all the attention. It seemed none of the people I dated understood me, plus I couldn't seem to find any spark of attraction for any of them. I was resigning myself to becoming a crazy old spinster lady. I figured I might have to get myself a pet cat to be my only love to complete the image.

Despite all that, I liked Nat, I had been relatively shy at school and had few friends. Nat was a good friend to me and someone I could open up to. She also got all the techie stuff that made people think I was a geek. She was probably one of the brighter people in the course. Most of the guys thought she was sleeping with someone to stay on, or using me to get by. Truth was she probably helped me more than I ever helped her and she could go toe to toe with any bloke on geek stuff. Mostly she played the ditz, but every now and then she would completely take some smart arse apart with her fairly formidable intellect.

"So straight off to Dr Smith's electromagnetics course? Or you wanna grab a quick coffee first?" Nat asked.

"I think I might just skip this lecture," I said.

"That's not like you Em, bunking off." Then she took a good look at me, "Hey you feeling alright?" She was suddenly looking at me worriedly. She always seemed to know how I was feeling. She told me once she was just really good at reading body language, but even so, it was uncanny.

"Feeling a bit off, headache and such," I replied.

"Well in that case you head off home. You can borrow my notes later. Go get yourself wrapped up warm, and have a lie down."

"Thanks Nat."

"You gonna be OK to head back to hall? I can come with if you like?"

"No I'm OK."

"Right ho, well I'll see you a bit later babe," she said. giving me a hug. She suddenly stiffened, "Uh oh! Don't look now, but your stalker is here."

While I had trouble finding guys that took an interest in me, there was one who wouldn't leave me alone. Mark Bishop had become obsessed with me. He was a bit of a weirdo, even more of an outsider than me, an odd quiet guy who sat at the back of a room on his own. He kept following me around and used to stand across the street from our house in the mornings, waiting for me to come out. That was till Nat threatened to call the cops on him.

He was a royal pain in the arse. It had started innocently enough. I went on a date with him after he asked me out at a hall of residence event. He had seemed nice enough, a little shy maybe, but I wasn't one to judge on that score. The date had been OK, but I found I just didn't like the guy, and had very few interests in common. It wasn't anyone's fault; I just didn't think we were likely to be friends. I explained this and, as far as I was concerned, we'd gone our separate ways amicably, except he wouldn't accept it was over. He kept turning up, trying to call me, and sending me little gifts. It was annoying and a bit scary.

"Don't worry we'll pull a fast one on him. You know the ladies in the maths block with the two exits?" I nodded, "You go in one and head out the other. I'll wait outside so he thinks I'm waiting for you," Nat said.

"Thanks Nat, last thing I need is him following me home when I'm ill."

"No problem, Emily. What else are friends for if not to deflect creepy stalkers? You really should speak with someone about him, he's getting weirder."

"I know Nat, maybe once I'm feeling better, K."

"Right ho, time for some subterfuge," she said with a big grin.

We made our way to the ladies, with Mark in tow. As we got there, Nat said, "OK I'll wait for you here don't take too long," in a fairly loud voice

I nodded and she gave me a sly wink, I swiftly dodged through to the other door and off into the building, exiting the other side away from where Nat was distracting Mark. I made my way home reassured that I was not being followed. I was feeling increasingly lousy, as by now, my head was pounding, and my muscles were aching. I staggered back to in St. George Hall, which consists of a main hall building, with a canteen a student bar and various other facilities. It had grown to include a few houses along the street next to it. These were separate from the main block and had their own feel. Nat and I lived in one of these houses. It was an older redbrick house dating from early in the university's existence, called Lilyvale. There was a small kitchen downstairs and maybe a dozen rooms, each with two people in them. There was a roughly equal mix of boys to girls. I used my key and staggered up to our room, number six, on the first floor.

I opened the door shuffled in, slammed it behind me, then collapsed on the bed, strewing my stuff at random across the room on the path to bed. I crashed there fully clothed, clutching my throbbing head.

I lay there for a short while and managed to get some sleep for a bit. I woke up a while later my head still pounding, my muscles aching, suddenly nauseous. I bolted out of the room for the bathroom, managing to get to the toilet where I threw up voluminously for quite a while.

After I was done, I sat there for a bit recovering. I heard a voice behind me, "Dude, you been drinking vodka again?"

It was Tom Winters an art student in the room across the way from us. He and his roommate were always out drinking late into the night and never seemed to go to lectures. I wasn't sure how he managed to stay on his course. He was a reasonably nice guy though, unlike his roommate who sober, was a right tosser, and worse when he was drunk.