His name was Colin Bailey. She had met him at a house party that she went to with her friends from home early freshman year; a party the rest of the room wasn't invited to mainly because of our "situation". You know what I'm talking about: that special time in anyone's life when, after they take the time to fill out a housing survey that the housing department at their respective school sends them, they're put in a room with people who are nothing like themselves, as well as what they wanted per the housing survey. But I could tell that Zoe was a kindred spirit. Someone who knew how to think for themselves.

The party didn't really go on for that long. Zoe was back in the room before the other two decided to go out and get themselves inebriated at one of the scard of ungodly parties going on downtown, where the bouncers will let anything with a low-cut shirt in. I sat at my desk, a copy of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction open and half read in my hands. Something was definitely odd about Zoe; she almost glowed with a sort of happiness that one feels after meeting the love of their life.

"What's his name?" I asked, not looking up from my book. Zoe literally threw herself onto the bed, and sighed heavily.

"Colin Bailey," she seemed to hum. When I heard that name I thought she was making it up -- it felt entirely too Irish; like Conan O'Brien, or Brendan Shanahan. "He's...oh my God."

Six weeks went on like this. I'd mock her about this imaginary Colin Bailey, until her started calling her. Inviting her places -- parties in the dorms, house parties downtown, that sort of thing -- and Zoe would jump whenever Colin would call. Every so often I, or another one of our roommates would get caught in the middle of the whirlpool known as Colin Bailey; no one but Zoe could feel his power, though. Well, that's what she called it anyway. "He's got a certain...energy about him," she would tell me.

I guess I started to get a little worried when Zoe started going online, trying to find out every possible detail about him that she could. What major he was in, what classes he was taking, where he was from, what he extra-curricular activities, that he transferred into his major, an e-mail address she's never use. She would say to me, "Hey! You're a civil engineer too! Is Colin in any of your classes?" I had never seen Colin Bailey before in my life.

And then the crying. Almost every night for close to six months she'd cry herself to sleep, wondering the things girls wondered about when a guy completely ignored them. I would spend hours telling her that she was pretty enough, and if he didn't think so, he was absolutely blind to the fact that she was an amazing girl underneath; far better than the gutter trash that tried to get with him and his buddies on a daily basis. Did Zoe hear a word I was saying? Not one syllable.

Somewhere near the end of freshman year, something snapped inside of Zoe. It was almost as if everything she did, it was all in some way connected to Colin. By this time her contact with Colin was extremely limited; she says he was busy, but the rest of the world knew he'd forgotten about her. She'd never really mention him, but I knew he was there, silently and unknowingly playing the puppeteer.

One year, and I had still not met Colin Bailey.

Sophomore year began, but something seemed off. Zoe seemed extremely self-confident and the air of losing a Colin Bailey that she never really had had disappeared. We were both ready to start fresh, leaving the antics of our freshman year behind. Or so I thought. During the first week of class, in one of my smaller engineering classes, I saw a name I had recognized on an attendance sheet that had been passed around in the room. A wave of panic washed completely over me, I had to remind myself to breathe. He was in the room; the man who, up until now, had remained a complete mystery to me. Like the dork I am, I craned my neck around the room, counting heads and names on the attendance sheet, trying to see who Colin was.

I spotted him. I saw the mysterious Colin Bailey with my own two eyes, and he was absolutely breathtaking. Radiant brown hair, which he kept hidden underneath his Duke baseball cap (although when the hat was on his head, gentle whisps of hair would peek out), was offset by his spectacular blue eyes, which seemed to get bluer every time he blinked. I started to get a feel for what Zoe meant by Colin's energy.

Zoe and I were no longer living together, but we still kept in touch. She was one of the better friends I had come out of freshman year with, and found that I had more in common with her than originally thought. Especially after our other two roommates treater he like absolute crap over the summer. "Zoe! Zoe! You will never guess who I saw in my CIE class today!" I exclaimed, sliding into the booth we had acquired in the Student Union. Zoe was all ears at this point. "Colin Bailey."

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, Zoe's general attitude shifted. "Really," she replied. She seemed less chipper, and her demeanor became darker. I shouldn't have said anything. I realized it as soon as I saw Zoe clenching her fists, but I thought she was over Colin! I asked if she was okay, and through her clenched teeth she said she was fine. Her left eye was twitching, but still she claimed she was okay.

After that encounter, Zoe was nowhere to be found. I would look for her online but she, who was always on instant messenger, wouldn't be there on any of her humorous screen names. My phone calls would go unanswered, and it worried me. She was missing, and somehow I felt responsible for her simply taking off.

Almost every time I went to class I saw Colin. I wanted to be mad; one of my good friends had virtually vanished, and it's mainly his fault. I wanted him to know what he had unknowingly done. But once I caught sight of him, all of that pseudo-angst I felt toward him was peeled away.

About the same time the end of the fall semester rolled around, a ray of sunlight in the continuing Zoe saga shone through the clouds. An e-mail, saying how happy she was that the semester was over and how next semester would be better than this one, blah blah blah. What the hell was she talking about?! "Better than this one"? She wasn't around for this one! But this wasn't what really bothered me. So I replied. commenting that I hadn't seen hide nor hair or her for a couple of months, and three weeks later I got a response.

Okay, I'll tell you a secret. But you've
got to promise not to tell another
living soul, okay? I've been following
the basketball team around...

Colin was on the basketball team. As I read her words, I was somewhat shocked, and just a tad bit scared. She didn't even like basketball -- hockey was her sport -- and to be perfectly honest, our team was horrible. So I could see only one reason for her doing what she was doing.

The spring semester began just as the snows of the hellacious Christmas storm were melted. Zoe came back and oh, did she have stories. I expected her to have raucous, sordid tales from her journey, but instead her stories were mostly G-rated. They mainly entailed her attending the game, and the stuff that Colin would do. But the one thing I noticed was that none of her tales included a story line that involved her and Colin, which led me to believe that Colin didn't even know she was there. For all intents and purposes he had forgotten about her, and since she was either completely oblivious about this or had just gone nuts, she started to stalk him.

It frightened me to think that Zoe had sunk this low. She was spending close to every waking moment focusing her attention on Colin. Her grades were slipping; I was afraid she would fail out if she kept this up. She had been toying with the idea of studying abroad -- traveling to a far away place with no Colin Bailey would be best for her -- and every chance I got I would remind her about it.

Eight months passed since I had last seen her. I had almost completely lost touch with her at that point, and was starting to feel as if I would never see her again. Rumors spread like wildfire, how Zoe went crazy and how she's plotting to kidnap Colin and run off to Toronto with him. Or how she did go study abroad, but went to a place like Zaire where computers were few and far between, and the Internet was non-existent. Well, I knew that the crazy part was right. Zoe had a history of being a little off -- she was always a tad eccentric -- and I for one knew she was off to the nut house the moment she told me she went and followed the basketball team around. Jen, her best friend from home, e-mailed me telling me that Zoe's parents weren't letting her go back to school, and it was all because of Colin Bailey.

Junior year was going to be odd without Zoe, but at least she could, we both could, phase a certain basketball-playing engineer out of both of our lives. The second day of my fluid mechanics lecture. Another attendance sheet. As I blindly went to put my name down, I glanced at the other names, and I see Colin Bailey, on the line right above mine.

He was sitting right next to me? That, that wasn't Colin Bailey. Or, at least, not the same Colin Bailey I knew from last year. It couldn't be a, a different Colin Bailey could it? Two completely different people with the same name in a major with not many people in it to begin with? The odds of that are pretty slim, almost impossible. Could it be that, that the Colin Bailey that had driven my close friend Zoe to madness, and the Colin Bailey I had come in contact with, were two totally different people? I looked up at him and smiled.

I had to find out. I ripped a little piece of paper out of my day planner, scribbled down a question, and slid it over to Colin. "Do you know Zoe?" I waited for an answer. I'm still waiting for one.