Zero Tolerance (11 page)

“So she told them all, ‘Luke has a condition called ADD.' She wrote it up on the board. ‘Does anyone know what these letters stand for? A-D-D? Attention deficit disorder. That's what Luke has, so his behavior problems are not his fault.'”

Luke paused. “There are still some losers who call me that, ADD Boy.”

Sierra made a sudden guess.

“Mitch. When you were fighting last week.
That's
what he called you.”

Luke didn't answer, but Sierra knew she had guessed right.

“I hate your third-grade teacher, too,” Sierra whispered. “I hate all of them. Her, and Mrs. Nolan, and the one who couldn't pronounce Julio's name.”

“But which of
your
teachers do
you
hate the most?” Luke asked.

“I hate Ms. Lin,” she offered.

“Doesn't count. Everybody hates Lintbag. Probably her own parents hate her.”

She might as well confess. “Okay, I lose. I never hated any of them.”

“Suck-up. Ass kisser,” Luke said, but not in a mean way, more in a friendly, almost flirty way.

If Em had been here in suspension—but how far away Sierra's former friends seemed right now—Em would have said, “Luke Bishop likes you.”

 

23

 

At lunchtime, with Mrs. Saunders out for the day and Ms. Lin alone in the office, the four suspendees were allowed to walk to the cafeteria to buy lunch unescorted.

“I told Sandy to keep an eye on you,” Ms. Lin told them. “So I don't want to hear about any funny business.”

Little did Ms. Lin know that all the funny business had already happened during the five minutes that she was out of the office a few hours ago. The
Denver Post
might very well not print Ms. Lin's letter to the editor—the only one of Sierra's that had been published was about the importance of bike safety. But then again, it very well might.

If only Sierra hadn't sent it!

But Ms. Lin deserved it, Sierra kept telling herself.

And either way, it couldn't be unsent.

As the four of them entered the cafeteria, Sierra wondered if Colin would come over to talk to her again. It might be awkward without Mrs. Saunders there to monitor the conversation so that Luke didn't say anything inappropriate, like
Coming to talk to your girlfriend?

On the one hand, if Luke said that and Colin heard it, it might give Colin the appealing idea that Sierra
should
be his girlfriend. On the other hand, it might scare him off instead. Was it better if a boy gradually became your boyfriend without even realizing it, so that by the time he did realize what was going on, it was already too late? Her mother had made it sound that way with her father: he came to her play with a friend, laughed at the wrong time, and then the next thing he knew they were married.

Colin looked up from his seat by the window. He didn't give her a full-fledged wave, but he held his hand up in greeting and gave her a big smile.

Back in the suspension room, eating her hot dog, crinkle fries, and iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing, Sierra thought about Colin's smile. And she thought about it some more as she turned the pages of Anne Frank's diary.

She had expected the book to be mainly about how terrible the Holocaust was, how horrible it was to be Jewish in a country under Nazi occupation. But it wasn't that way at all. It was mainly about Anne's intense feelings as a teenager—her quarrels with her mother, her crush on Peter, who was living in hiding with her. If Anne Frank were alive and going to Longwood Middle School, Sierra could have talked to her about Colin, and Anne would have understood completely.

Sierra was lost so deeply in Anne's life that it was a few seconds before she realized that she could hear Mr. Besser's voice, talking to Ms. Lin. Even in one-on-one conversations, his voice projected as if the only style of speech he had was addressing the entire student body at an assembly.

“… Attorney for the district,” he was saying. “Tomorrow morning at ten.”

“Stephen was in this morning while you were out,” Ms. Lin said.

Mr. Lydgate's first name was Stephen.

“He's worried that there may be a problem with the choir trip to the Springs.”

“What kind of problem?” Mr. Besser asked.

Sierra crept out of her seat and flattened herself against the hallway just beyond the rear entrance to the main office so that she could hear better. From where she had positioned herself she could see Mr. Besser but not Ms. Lin.

“If the Shepard girl isn't allowed to go on the trip,” Ms. Lin said, “it's going to spoil the balance of the voices. Something like that.”

“She
can't
go. I told him that already. First, she's suspended, and that's what suspension
means
: no participation in any school activities during the suspension period—sports, theater, choir, anything. Second, Friday is the day of the hearing.”

“Well, he said he's coming to talk with you once school is dismissed.”

Mr. Besser turned to leave. His jaw was twitching in an irritated way.

“Oh, and he said that one of the choir members is trying to get the others to refuse to go if Sierra can't go,” Ms. Lin continued. “Organizing some kind of a boycott.”

Was it Colin?
Please, please, please let it be Colin.
One thing Sierra knew for sure: it wasn't Celeste.

Mr. Besser stopped and whirled around.

“Which member? When do they rehearse? I'll go talk to them myself and put a stop to this nonsense.”

Sierra jumped as his office door shut, too loudly, but she managed not to give herself away. She slipped back to the suspension room undetected just as the closing bell sounded for the day.

 

24

 

There were no reporters waiting in the parking lot. Even though Sierra was relieved not to have to see her sad self on TV again, she felt a pang of disappointment, almost irritation. So that was it for her fifteen minutes of fame. She could be expelled without anybody knowing or caring, supplanted by the story of how the city hadn't sent out enough snow plows because of budget cuts.

She saw their Volvo and slid into the front seat. Her mother's face was lit with the same kind of excitement as when she was in the middle of writing a play.

“What?” Sierra asked.

“Don't tell your father.” Her mother backed out of her parking space into the long line of cars waiting to crawl into the exit lane. “We're just going to stop by Beautiful Mountain so you can meet the principal and see what you think.”

“But I already said I don't want to change schools, and Daddy doesn't want me to change, either.”

“That's why we're not going to mention this to him just yet. Honey, I visited there this morning, did a school tour, sat in on an art class. I think you're going to love it.”

“I don't want to change schools,” Sierra repeated.

“Honey?” Her mother was so intent on their conversation that she cut off another car as she finally pushed her way out of the parking lot. “Honey, you may have to change schools whether you want to or not.”

Hearing her mother say that, her own mother, in such a matter-of-fact tone, scared Sierra more than anything that had happened yet.

“But Daddy—”

“Your father doesn't win every case. No lawyer does. I'm just saying that you have options. That's all. And, I might add, very attractive options.”

Beautiful Mountain was on the edge of town, in a strikingly pretty setting, situated against protected mountain open space, with its network of inviting hiking trails. Instead of one large building, like Longwood Middle School, there was a cluster of smaller buildings, like cozy cottages tucked in the woods. The littleness of the buildings made it look like an elementary school, or even a preschool, in Sierra's opinion.

“How many grades go here?” she asked.

“There's an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, all on one campus.”

“Campus” sounded like a college, but it was hardly a college.

“That's one of the things I find most appealing about it,” her mother said as she parked the car in the empty visitor lot. “If you're ready for more advanced classes in any subject area, which I'm sure you are, you can just step into the next building.”

“Where is everybody?” Sierra asked.

“Well, school is out for the day, of course. But there are only a hundred and thirty students in all twelve grades.”

“So they can't have very many classes to pick from,” Sierra pointed out. “I bet they don't have any advanced classes at all. Do they have calculus? Or…” She tried to think of some other hard, impressive course.

“You haven't even walked in the door yet,” her mother replied.

Outside the main building—the only way Sierra could tell it was the main building was by the small sign bearing the word
OFFICE
—two older boys with longish hair stood loitering.

“They need haircuts,” Sierra said.

“Oh, some kids just want to be a little different. They don't want to cross every
t
and dot every
i
.”

Sierra liked crossing
t
's and dotting
i
's.

Or she used to.

Inside the main building, the walls were filled with student artwork—vividly colored self-portraits. Full-grown trees in terra-cotta pots stretched toward the ceiling skylight.

The secretary in the front office was a young woman who looked barely old enough to be out of college, dressed in blue jeans and a loose, embroidered cotton top. Her frizzy hair was even wilder than Sierra's mother's.

“Nice to see you again,” the secretary said. “I'll let Jackie know you and your daughter are here.”

Jackie turned out to be the principal, who at least had on a dress rather than jeans, but a flowing African-patterned dress that didn't seem to Sierra like what a principal would wear.

“Welcome to Beautiful Mountain, Sierra,” Jackie said with a warm, crinkly smile. Jackie's close-cropped gray hair set off her long, dangling earrings.

Does she know about me? Does she know what happened to me?

“Your mother told me that you love the arts,” Jackie said. “And that you're a strong student leader at Longwood Middle School.”

Sierra didn't know if she was a
strong
student leader. “I'm in Leadership Club.”

“Well, here we love students who take initiative,” Jackie said. “We value student ideas enormously. But one difference you'll find at Beautiful Mountain is that, while we have a lot of student leaders, we don't have many student followers.” She laughed in a friendly way.

Then her tone changed. “I'm sorry for what you're going through right now,” she said softly. “It must be very difficult.”

Sierra was torn between gratitude for Jackie's genuine-sounding sympathy and a desire, however paradoxical, to defend her school.

“Don't you have rules here?” she asked. The question came out sounding more hostile than she had intended.

“Of course we do. Human beings couldn't live together without rules. Our students themselves play a big role in shaping those rules.”

Jackie put her arm around Sierra's shoulders. It might have felt presumptuous or intrusive, but it didn't.

“But, Sierra, no student would ever get expelled from Beautiful Mountain for trying to do the right thing. I can promise you that.”

Even as her eyes pricked with tears, Sierra tried to defend Mr. Besser one more time. It was strange, but defending Mr. Besser was almost like defending her father, too. They both thought Longwood Middle School was vastly better than some “progressive” alternative.

“So students can bring knives to school here and nothing happens?”

“Nothing happens,” Jackie said gently, “if someone brings a knife to school by mistake.”

As Jackie led Sierra and her mother on a mini-tour of Beautiful Mountain, Sierra noticed that the classrooms were ridiculously small—ten desks!—and that the library for the entire school had hardly more books in it than Sierra's book-crammed house. Yes, there was art everywhere, but the Longwood Middle School art teacher was terrific, too—Sierra thought again of her poor, abandoned pot. And would any choir from Beautiful Mountain be chosen from schools all around the state to perform at the big music educators' convention?

But part of Sierra remembered the frizzy-haired secretary greeting her with a friendly “Hey.”

Part of Sierra remembered the warmth of Jackie's comforting arm around her shoulders.

“So what did you think?” her mother asked her as they got in the car to drive away.

Sierra gazed out the car window at the falling January darkness. “It was okay.”

 

25

 

Halfway through Tuesday morning, Sierra had to admit it: she missed Luke Bishop. She read Anne Frank while Julio and Brad played on their Game Boys, careful to hold them hidden on their laps under the table. The three of them had no interaction aside from an initial hello as the boys wandered in, separately, a few minutes after the tardy bell.

Mrs. Saunders escorted them to lunch at the start of 4A.

“Did your son's wisdom teeth surgery turn out okay?” Sierra asked her.

“Aren't you sweet to ask,” Mrs. Saunders said. “It was fine, though I think he's already tired of Jello and vanilla pudding.”

Julio followed behind them, saying nothing; Brad had brought his lunch from home. They both had three-day suspensions, so their suspensions would end tomorrow.

Only Sierra had done something so unforgivable that her suspension would last forever.

Today Colin was obviously scanning the lunch line, looking for her. As soon as she picked up her tray of macaroni-and-beef casserole, canned corn, canned pears, and small carton of milk, he came over to talk to her.