When Brilliant Turns Bloody | The Secrets of The Academy

II

Anders's POV

Anders and Siddhart put their tennis rackets away and ran to catch up to their friends at the track.

"C'mon!" Anders called to Siddhart, who had dragged behind a little and was checking his phone.

Siddhart looked up at Andy. "I just got a text..."

At first, Anders considered rolling his eyes. It was probably that girl from science that Siddhart could not stop gushing about, but Anders had known him since they were toddlers, and something about Siddhart's worried expression stopped him from teasing his friend.

"Hey!" Alessya called. Cat, Allison, Douglas, and Alister were running over to them with her. Their other friend Nolan had joined as well while the two were practicing tennis.

"Gosh you guys stink," Cat teased. She must've seen the peculiar look on Siddhart's face because she got serious real fast. "What's wrong?"

Anders peered into Siddhart's hands were a text message had popped up on his phone.

"Let's play a game, shall we?

Be careful, cheaters never win"

The message had come from a blocked number.

A chill shuddered down Ander's spine.

A laugh broke the eerie quiet. "It's probably just a stupid prank," Allison said nonchalantly.

Everyone forced a chuckle in agreement, but the fun mood was gone. Anders felt a pit knotting in his stomach. The truth was, their group had been brought together by an incident they were all too guilty of.

Two years ago, sophomore year, Anders, Allison, and Nolan had been assigned to work on a school project together. They had been messing around with some programming on the school computer when something popped up. The answers to the Fall Exam. 

The Fall Exam was the exam that decided whether students would be kicked out of the prestigious private school they attended, which they dubbed "The Academy", or if they'd stay for the rest of the year. The exam was notoriously difficult, and the three kids had all been close to failing (which in the case of The Academy was below an 80 percent) the year before. Although Anders and the other two claimed to have wanted to notify a teacher or simply close the pop up, what actually happened wasn't so. The three decided to document a copy of these answers. Of course, they only planned to just use the answer key if they really didn't know a question, as they tried to justify, but it was cheating nonetheless.

However, when they were almost done with transferring the answer key to their individual flash drives, Cat and Alessya, who had come to give Allison a ride home, had arrived early and noticed what was going on. Anders could vividly remember how terrified he had been that the girls would turn them in; cheating was the worst possible thing to be caught for at The Academy. But the two girls had simply averted their eyes and sheepishly asked for a copy of the document themselves. Douglas, Alister, and Siddhart had also been working on their project at that time, and noticing something was up, they found out about the document as well. The eight students swore never to speak of what they were about to do ever again and to deny any possible interrogations. After the Fall Exam, the eight of them had been moved to the top of their class for their high marks. Keeping their guilty secret brought the students together to become to close group they were now. Over the two years, they had become the closest of friends and they had all practically forgotten about the "incident", as they referred to it.

But someone else knew.