Zero Tolerance (15 page)

A knock came on her bedroom door, not her mother's gentle tap but the vigorous rap of more assertive knuckles.

“Come in,” she called faintly.

He had already pushed the door open. “Are you awake?”

She heard suppressed excitement in his voice. That's right—her mother had said there were some “developments,” as if Sierra cared about any “developments” in a world where Colin liked Celeste.

“Yes,” Sierra told him. “I'm still awake.”

“Come on down to the family room. There's something I want to tell you and your mother.”

Sierra pulled on the ratty terry-cloth bathrobe that she wouldn't let her mother throw away and scuffed her feet into the huge bunny slippers Lexi had given her for Christmas. Once downstairs, she settled herself sideways on the couch, her legs stretched out with her feet on her mother's lap and Cornflake lying heavy against her tense stomach. The occasion felt strangely solemn—to be summoned from her bed for an announcement so important that it couldn't keep till morning.

“What is it?” she asked her father. “What happened?”

“One thing I have down at the law firm,” he began, “is a truly crackerjack staff. I mean, top-notch. I want them to do something today, it's done
yesterday
.”

She should have known he wouldn't rush whatever he had to say.

“So I asked Quincy, our research whiz, to do a little checking. Just to see if he could find anything interesting.”

“Find anything interesting about what?”

“About a special friend of yours and mine. Mr. Thomas Alford Besser.”

“Like what kind of thing?”

“Well, here's an example. I myself think it's very interesting that a Mr. Thomas Alford Besser has on his record a DUI.”

Sierra must have looked blank, because her father stopped to explain, emphasizing each word with careful deliberation.

“Driving under the influence. Yes, the champion of zero tolerance for other people appears to have quite a high level of tolerance when it comes to himself. When the cop pulled him over, his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. Not twice. Three times. I don't know about you, but I happen to find that interesting. Downright fascinating.”

“But…” Sierra's mother hesitated, as if unwilling to say anything that would mar her husband's evident enjoyment of the moment. “A lot of people have infractions when they're young. Maybe I shouldn't say this in front of Sierra—and, Sierra, honey, I never, ever want you to do this when you're old enough to drive—but once when I was in college I drove home from a party where I had been drinking too much, and I careened into a curb so hard I flattened my tire. It was sheer luck that I wasn't pulled over, or worse, didn't hit somebody.”

Sierra's father brushed his wife's story away with a wave of his hand.

“Do you want to know when Mr. Thomas Alford Besser had his DUI? Was it after a fraternity party when he was nineteen? No, it was not. It was two months ago. November twenty-ninth, to be precise.”

“This past November?” Sierra tried to wrap her mind around the date.

“Why wasn't it in the papers?” her mother asked.

“It happened back in Massachusetts, where he was visiting his parents for Thanksgiving. Lucky for him. Or, should I say, lucky for him until I gave Quincy that little research assignment. Somehow I don't think it's going to look so good when it's in the papers here—the principal who is all set to expel a twelve-year-old girl for bringing an apple knife to school by mistake was arrested for getting behind the wheel of a car with blood alcohol levels three times the legal limit? I think Mr. Thomas Alford Besser may find himself out of a job faster than you can spell the word ‘hypocrite.'”

Sierra pulled the frayed belt on her bathrobe to tighten it. “So what are you going to do?”

“Well, given that reporters from half a dozen major newspapers have called our house a total of twenty or more times over the course of the past week, I imagine I could find one or two who might think this information, shall we say, relevant to the case at hand.”

The look on his face was the same Sierra had seen on Cornflake as the cat crouched, waiting to pounce on a fake mouse at the end of a cat tease toy, gathering concentration for the kill, but in no hurry to pounce right away.

“So that is one option,” her father said.

He was standing facing the couch where Sierra and her mother were sitting, as if he were in the courtroom addressing the jury.

“Or,” he said, “I suppose I could stop by Longwood Middle School tomorrow. I know Tom has an open-door policy, welcoming parents to come in even without an appointment when they have a concern. So I could drop by to see if my possession of this information might influence his desire to proceed with the expulsion hearing, or consider other alternatives.”

“Are you talking about blackmail?” Sierra's mother asked.

“That's not the way I would put it. I'd prefer to call it a mutually advantageous arrangement for all parties concerned. I have information that he'd rather not have revealed. I also have a daughter I'd rather not have expelled. So we work something out.”

“But that
is
blackmail,” Sierra's mother said.

Sierra's father made no reply. Instead, he resumed his argument.

“Then there's a third option. I might save this interesting tidbit of information for one more day. And then I might mention it on Friday, during the course of a certain public hearing where I think our friendly reporters will also be present with some friendly cameramen as well. I think option three might make for some memorable footage, wouldn't you say?”

Sierra's mother hugged Sierra's feet; she seemed to be seeking to comfort herself as much as to comfort Sierra.

Finally she spoke. “Gerald, I don't—”

“You don't what?”

“I don't think…”

She didn't finish her sentence.

“Now don't go getting all bighearted and oh-poor-Tom-Besser on me. I warned him. You heard me, both of you. I've been in this business a long, long time, and everyone should know by now that it's not a good idea to mess with Gerald Shepard. And it's an even worse idea to mess with his kid. And if you do, you shouldn't be surprised if you end up getting squished like a bug.”

Sierra would never have guessed that she could feel sorry for Mr. Besser, but right now she did. All right, he had done something terrible, more than one thing that was terrible.

But she had done something terrible, too.

 

32

 

Sierra couldn't sleep. She always had trouble sleeping if she stayed up too late, as if once the appropriate time for falling asleep had passed, that was it, and she wouldn't get another chance at sleep until another proper bedtime rolled around. Now, in addition, she heard inside her head the measured tones of her father's voice, more menacing than if he had exploded in rage.

She couldn't remember a single time that he had ever punished her for anything when she was little, that he had ever so much as scolded her. But even when she was little, she had somehow known that disobeying her father wasn't an option. She hadn't thought,
Oh, I should put my toys back in the toy chest because Daddy will be mad if I don't.
It had truly never occurred to her that refusing to do what he said existed as a possibility.

Sierra turned her pillow over, glad of its coolness against her flushed cheek. She had heard a simile a couple of weeks ago: “cool as the other side of the pillow.” Whoever had made up that simile must have known what it was to be lying awake at 12:30 a.m., trying out the other side of the pillow to see if you might feel a bit drowsier if you laid your face against it.

Mr. Besser was a hypocrite.

He deserved to have his DUI exposed on TV.

He deserved to be squished like a bug.

Sierra just didn't want to be there when it happened. Whereas her father did, and he wanted to be the one who made it happen.

What about Ms. Lin? Hadn't Sierra squished her like a bug? She hadn't meant for her spur-of-the-moment e-mail to have such far-reaching consequences. She hadn't meant for Ms. Lin to lose her job. Not that Ms. Lin had lost her job exactly; she had been the one who had quit. No one had made her quit. But she had felt too affronted by Mr. Besser's scolding to stay.

Ms. Lin was mean.

She had a bug-squishing personality of her own, except that instead of squishing bugs, she squished middle school kids.

But what Sierra had done was unforgivable. What Sierra had done had changed Ms. Lin's life forever.

The other side of the pillow was no longer cool. Sierra flipped the pillow over again, but the
other
other side hadn't had time to cool back down again. Now both sides of the pillow were hot, and she felt sticky and sweaty inside her nightgown. The green-lit numerals on the clock beside her bed read 12:45.

And Colin. What was the point of his petition and his boycott? It obviously wasn't to declare his love for her.

How could Colin like Celeste?

And what about the choir trip? Would it be ruined? It would serve Celeste right if it was, for caring more about a spoiled class trip than she did about an expelled ex-friend.

But what about the others, who had worked so hard for so many months, all those early mornings of practice after practice since September?

And Mr. Lydgate was so nice. He was young for a teacher, maybe in his late twenties. Having his students picked to perform at the music convention was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him as a middle school music teacher.

Mr. Lydgate deserved to get to go to Colorado Springs with his choir, the choir he was so proud of, and conduct them as they performed on the big stage.

What did Sierra deserve for what she had done to Ms. Lin?

And Luke Bishop, suspended twice within a week: what did Luke deserve?

But before Sierra could finish answering her questions about Mr. Besser, and Ms. Lin, and Celeste, and Colin, and Luke, before she could finish answering any of her questions, she had fallen asleep.

 

33

 

“You're up early.” Her mother glanced at the clock on the microwave as Sierra came into the kitchen the next morning, already showered and dressed for school. “I was going to let you sleep in a bit, on the theory that it wouldn't be the end of the world if you were late just once.”

“Can you drive me to school early so that I can be there by seven?”

“Seven? Of course, but—” She broke off, her face registering recognition swiftly followed by distress. “Thursday. Choir. Oh, honey, I know how much you want to go with the rest of them on the trip, but I don't think Mr. Besser's going to budge. Mr. Lydgate can't fight him on this one. Unless your father … this DUI bombshell of his that he has ready to explode … But you know your father. He's going to do this thing
his
way, with
his
timing.”

“That's not it.” Sierra took a waffle from the box in the freezer and put it in the toaster. “I know they're not going to let me go. I just want to be there at their last rehearsal. If Mr. Lydgate tells me I'm not allowed to be there, I'll go on to the suspension room.”

“You're sure?”

Sierra nodded.

“Well, have some yogurt at least, along with the waffle. You can't go to school without some protein in your stomach.”

As if Sierra needed protein so that her brain could process all that she was learning during eight periods of suspension.

But maybe protein would give her the strength and courage for what she was heading into school early to do.

*   *   *

The school choirs rehearsed in the auditorium, sharing the space throughout the day in alternating time slots with orchestra and band.

As Sierra walked down the dimly lit corridor from the front entrance to the auditorium—most of the lights hadn't been switched on yet—she could hear a couple of kids fooling around on the grand piano on the side of the stage, plunking out “Heart and Soul.” Well, it was one step up from “Chopsticks.”

Then she heard someone—a person who was obviously taking piano lessons—start to play a real piece of music. Sierra recognized it as the sonata of Mozart's that had the “Rondo alla Turca” in it. It had to be Celeste; that was her piece for an upcoming Mostly Mozart kids' concert in February.

Waiting in the hall for a moment before going in, Sierra heard Celeste make a mistake and have to start the measure over again.

She was glad to hear her make it.

“Okay, singers, up on the risers,” she heard Mr. Lydgate say with his usual heartiness, even at 7:00 a.m., when it was still dark outside, even on the day before a trip-of-a-lifetime that wasn't going to happen unless Mr. Besser budged. Or Colin budged. Or a miracle happened.

“I know the status of the trip is uncertain right now,” Mr. Lydgate said, “but I still want you to give me everything you have this morning. We're going to belt our little hearts out. So let's get started, because Mr. Besser is planning to stop by to give us his send-off.”

Someone said something that Sierra couldn't hear—probably Colin, with his soft voice.

“Well, I know Mr. Besser is hoping to be able to convince you to reconsider the boycott,” Sierra heard Mr. Lydgate say. “Like me, he believes this is a fabulous opportunity for all of you to share what you've accomplished with music educators from all over the state. But I've said all I'm going to say on that subject. All right, let's warm up our voices.”

Mr. Lydgate played the chords for the opening exercise.

“Mother made me munch my M&M's,” seven voices warbled.

He struck the next-higher chord.

“Mother made me munch my M&M's.”

If Sierra was going to do this thing, she had to do it now.