The shadow disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving only a cold draft behind. “Was that... Tim?” Lena whispered, looking around nervously. But Tim was sitting at the back of the class as usual, grinning widely. “No, I swear, that wasn’t me!” he called out, half laughing, half challenging.
“Okay, enough ghost stories,” Max said, trying to ease the tension a bit. “We really need to focus on finding the culprit now. And I have an idea.”
“What is it?” Mia asked curiously.
“Well, let’s check the phones. Maybe there are clues – chats, messages, or something like that.”
Lena nodded. “Right, maybe someone left something somewhere. Something we overlooked.”
So they did. During the break, the four gathered in a quiet corner of the school library, each with their phone in hand. Mia carefully opened her device, which she had gotten back by now, and scrolled through the messages. Suddenly, she stopped at a chat – a group chat she had never heard of before.
“Hey, look at this!” she said, showing the screen. The chat was called “Class Gossip 9b” and was full of messages about them – but not exactly nice ones.
“What the...” Max muttered, reading along. “‘Mia is such a drama queen,’ ‘Who knows what she’s really up to,’ ‘Phone gone? Sure, she lost it herself, typical Mia.’”
Lena snorted. “That’s really mean. And the worst part: these aren’t just silly remarks, they’re really badmouthing her!”
“And that’s not all,” Sam said, scrolling up. “Here it says: ‘We should show her who’s boss’ and ‘Time someone taught Mia a lesson.’ That sounds dangerous.”
Mia swallowed hard. “That’s exactly what I was afraid of. They’re bullying me online, and I didn’t even notice.”
“We have to find out who started this chat,” Lena said determinedly. “If we find the admin, maybe we can catch the culprit.”
“But how?” Mia asked. “The chat is secret. I’m not even in it.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Max replied. “Only the people who know the chat are in it. And they’re probably the ones badmouthing you.”
“Okay, let’s first look at all the chat members,” Sam suggested, starting to go through the participant list. “There are names here, but many are just nicknames or abbreviations.”
Lena frowned. “There’s, for example, ‘Shadow’ and ‘Ghost.’ Who could that be?”
“Typical that someone hides behind such strange pseudonyms,” Max muttered. “But we can watch them to see if they behave suspiciously.”
Over the next few days, they spent their time observing their classmates more closely and secretly checking the chat again and again. But the admin remained invisible, and no one acted suspiciously. The rumors and nastiness against Mia even got worse, although no one knew who was actually running the chat.
One afternoon, when they met again to discuss their next steps, a new anonymous chat message appeared on Mia’s phone. A message popped up: “You can’t hide, Mia. We know everything.”
“That’s sick,” Mia whispered, looking around fearfully. “Who does something like that?”
“No matter who it is, we’ll find them,” Lena said firmly. “We won’t give up. Together we’re unbeatable.”
But at that moment, Max’s phone vibrated – another message blinked on: “You’ll regret getting involved soon, Max.”
They all looked at each other in horror. “This is getting worse and worse,” Sam said. “We have to do something before this gets completely out of control.”
But who exactly was behind the messages remained in the dark – and the shadow of the unknown grew ever larger...