Everybody else in the classroom had begun talking and laughing, but Michelle's group remained silent.

"Well, I guess it's just us four, then," Gale finally said. "Since Kieran isn't, um, here."

Michelle looked down at her paper, spinning her pen around her fingers anxiously. The founder had given her a new order -- or threat, as Michelle liked to call it -- and she was supposed to follow through with it that period. It wasn't necessarily a hard task, but she was still slightly afraid of the others' reactions.

"Um, yeah," Michelle said in what she hoped was a loud voice. "Too bad he got his dumb ass suspended. Who knew someone like him would be behind the pranks and everything going around the school?"

For a moment, the classroom turned quiet, and Michelle felt her face burn at the pressure of practically everyone's eyes on her. At least breaking in and hacking hadn't required so much attention on herself.

Michelle shrugged, trying to act nonchalant as the founder instructed her to act. "I mean, am I wrong?" She hoped nobody heard the crack in her voice as she said the last word.

"Michelle, as much as I appreciate hearing your voice, try to use it when discussing the project?" Mrs. Aminov, their teacher, stared at Michelle with a disapproving look. "And, the rest of you, get back to work!"

Michelle exhaled as the class slowly but surely got louder again. She turned her eyes onto her group mates, who were all staring at her with open mouths. Well, it was time to continue with what the founder had told her to do.

"Anyways, did you guys go back to the OBB High School page?" she asked, acting like nothing was wrong. "Someone put it back up, with a new link."

"Yeah, I saw that!" Clay blurted out quickly.

Brianna raised an eyebrow as she reached for her phone. "Why, what else is new?" she asked as her fingers flew over her phone screen. "Is it another -- Holy shit, what the fuck?"

Gale also had his eyes glued to his phone as he scrolled down, a frown on his face. "Wait, what is this?" he said. "Who's Mr. Wong? And Nathan Pierce . . . isn't that the guy who --"

"Yo, what the hell is this?" Brianna cut in. "I thought Wong got an early retirement and moved to Hawaii, while Nathan ran away to San Francisco so he has easy access to drugs."

"Seriously?" Clay said. "I thought Wong resigned and moved to Europe while Nathan's a high school dropout who ran to Washington D.C. to be a gangster."

Michelle frowned. She had heard that Mr. Wong quit his job after winning the lottery and Nathan Pierce had always been a troublemaker who only ran away for attention. Well, all of them were clearly wrong, if the article on the OBB High website was accurate, but how could their theories be so different?

Ping!

A sudden message from somewhere made Michelle glance down at her phone.

You have 1 new message from the OBB app!

Michelle hesitated, then went to the app so she could read the message. Maybe she was finally done with doing these things.

@the.founder.real: Wow, I didn't know you had such a loud voice! Anyways, nice work spreading the info about the article. Thanks to you, the whole school should know about it before the dumbass teachers shut it down again. I look forward to working with you again!

Michelle snapped her head back up. Judging by the last sentence, she wasn't done being blackmailed by the founder. However, judging by the entire message, the founder was currently in the same room as her. She scanned the classroom, but it was too late -- practically every single person was on their phones, whispering and gossiping about the new update on the website.

She closed her eyes as she tilted her head up to the ceiling. The mind games were killing her. With a groan, she opened her eyes and started to lower her head when something on the white ceiling caught her attention. She had thought it was just a small smudge, but, looking closely, it was what she thought it was.

Right above the seat Michelle was sitting in, the purple initials -O.B.B. was written onto the ceiling.

***

Sorry for the late update, but I think it's a lot longer than usual :) Anyways, I'm going to admit I was a little disappointed by the lack of voting for the previous chapter. Therefore, I'm going to give you all until Brianna's chapter to vote. So far, there is a tie (2:2) between [b] and [c].

Also, one of my books passed the first round for the Open Novella Contest!