Layne was always made fun of because of her name. It looked like “Lane” but it was pronounced “Laynee”. She hated her parents for being quirky and forgetting her last “e” so people would know what her name was. Once she left town and went to college, she decided to just not correct people. After all, who was there to tell them otherwise other than her. That was the perk of leaving a small town. She was anonymous. The only problem was that when she needed help, it was harder to find someone that she knew. Her suitemate in her dorm wasn’t great and was pretty flaky when it came to helping out and the classmates that she had made friends with lived off campus. Now, she was stuck in her dorm room while a mysterious illness started taking down people fast.

A lot of the students were ending up in the clinic or the hospital. Layne was worried that she would end up there too, but so far she had stayed out of the craziness. Her parents had called her several times, asking her to come home and ride it all out there. She was thisclose to actually taking them up on the offer of a ride back home to get away from all of the illness. The only thing that was keeping her from actually saying yes to them was the fact they kept hinting at the fact they felt like she couldn’t handle any of this on her own. Layne was too stubborn to let them think that she couldn’t handle everything that was going on. It was just sick people. 

Layne looked up at the paper that was pinned to her bulletin board.

LOOK FOR THESE SYMPTOMS

FEVER

FATIGUE

HEADACHES

NAUSEA

VOMITING

DIARRHEA 

CONFUSION

INSOMNIA

BLEEDING

Layne had printed it out and posted it there so that she could watch out for the symptoms herself. So far, she hadn’t experienced anything and as far as she knew, neither had her suitemate. Layne put her laptop over onto her desk and stood, slipping on her shoes. She grabbed her keys and a mask and headed out the door to pick up her lunch from the dining hall. She knocked gently on her suitemate’s door.
“Hey babe. You want to walk together to get lunch?”