laptop problem, ''y'' key is hard to press?

I'm not sure what happened. I had my labtop out in one class, put it away, transprted it to the next class, and the 'y' key was just very stiff. It feels like I am pushing down on something besides the key, but i havfe aready cleaned under the key with a q-tip and found nothing. When I press down on it, the bottom left corner of the key seems to be the area where the problem occures, as when i press it, except in that corner, is always presses on a ''slant'' downward toward the opposite corner. It is very annoying, and its hard to write papers when sometimes the 'y' dosen't register because I don't hit it hard enough. Nothing has been spilled on the labtop, in fact its only 4 months old. It's a Compaq Presario C700....any help is much appriciated! (I have not taken the key ''cap'' off because I'm not sure if they come off, if i could just pop off the 'y' cap to fix this please provide instructions for how to do this.)