Zero Tolerance (16 page)

She came in quickly through the side door of the auditorium and slipped up onto the stage where the others were in formation on the risers, boy-girl-boy-girl. With seven instead of eight, one girl was missing on the end.

Still higher: “Mother made me munch my M&M's!”

Sierra slipped into her abandoned place on the end of the riser and joined the singing.

It took Mr. Lydgate a moment to notice she was there, though Celeste's gaze had fallen on her right away. Then his eyes lit up.

“Sierra! Welcome back!”

His face crinkled with relief, and he folded his arms across his chest in a gesture that clearly meant “Thank goodness.”

Sierra realized that he must be thinking that she was back with Mr. Besser's permission, that Mr. Besser had lifted her suspension to save the choir trip.

“No,” she said. “No—I'm not back. I wish I were, but I'm not.”

He looked unbearably disappointed.

“Then, Sierra, I don't think … No. If you want to rehearse with us this one last time, I'm not going to be the one to tell you that you can't. That's Mr. Besser's job, not mine.”

As if on cue, the door at the rear of the auditorium was flung open. Mr. Besser briskly strode up onto the stage.

He, too, didn't realize at once that Sierra was there, that eight students were arrayed on the risers instead of seven.

“Good morning, boys and girls!” Mr. Besser boomed, with his waggling eyebrows and wide, persuasive smile. “I don't want to interrupt your rehearsal. I want you to have time for this last important run-through of the program you're going to perform tomorrow as representatives of Longwood Middle School in Colorado Springs.”

He was talking as if the boycott weren't happening, as if by his refusing to acknowledge it, it would cease to exist.

Then he, too, noticed Sierra.

She didn't give him a chance to rebuke her for being there. If she let him scold her, if she let him humiliate her in front of the rest of the choir, she wouldn't be able to do what she had come in early to do.

“Mr. Lydgate, Mr. Besser,” Sierra said, coming down from the risers to face the choir as the two adult men were doing. “I know I'm not allowed to go on the trip. But there's something I want to say.”

“Sierra,” Mr. Besser said warily.

Sierra let her gaze fall on him coolly. The knowledge of what had happened in his recent past, and of what was going to happen in his near future, gave her a power over him she hadn't had before. But she wasn't drawing on that power right now.

“I know some of you are upset about what has happened to me. You think it's unfair. Because it
is
unfair.”

She didn't look at Mr. Besser to see if the muscles in his jaw were tightening, if his face was mottled with anger. Instead she made herself look at Colin, who was standing next to Celeste.

“I appreciate all you've tried to do for me. I mean, not for me, but to protest this unfairness.”

She tried not to let sarcasm creep into her voice:
Believe me, I know you're not doing this for me.

“But I want you to go on this trip. I want you to go. I love this choir. We've worked so hard this year, and the trip means so much to all of us—to me, too—and to Mr. Lydgate, who's been such a great teacher.”

She hadn't meant to cry, but now she felt a wobble creeping into her voice.

“I just can't—I can't stand it—if—”

Mr. Lydgate laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“I just don't want anything else to be ruined,” she finished in a whisper.

She couldn't let herself meet Colin's eyes, but she did let herself look at Celeste. Celeste was crying. Then Celeste stumbled down from the risers and hugged Sierra, hard. Sierra made herself accept Celeste's embrace.

Then the whole choir, including Colin, crowded around Sierra, hugging her.

Mr. Lydgate was wiping his eyes.

Only Mr. Besser stood apart from the group embrace.

“Well!” he said, as they finally pulled apart.

For a fleeting moment, Sierra thought he might let her stay, let her go on the trip, that he might break his own inflexible rules just this once.

Then he said, “I guess Sierra and I should let you go on with your rehearsal.”

But when the two of them reached the hall, and the auditorium door closed behind them, he turned to her and said, “Thank you.”

Sierra was about to say,
I didn't do it for you, I did it for Mr. Lydgate, I did it for the choir,
but already, at 7:15 in the morning, she was too drained for any hostile confrontations with anyone. She wasn't like her father: hostile confrontations energized him and gave him strength.

But she also couldn't bring herself to say,
You're welcome,
or
That's okay.

They walked in silence to the office. A couple of times Mr. Besser gave her a sidelong glance as if he was about to say something, but he didn't speak. What could he possibly say to her, given how wrongly he had acted, and how wrongly he was continuing to act?

When they reached the office, Sierra saw that Mrs. Saunders was seated at Ms. Lin's desk, and some new woman—with freckles and curly red hair like Anne of Green Gables—was seated at Mrs. Saunders's desk.

“This is Ms. Keith, who's temping for us this week,” Mr. Besser said. “Ms. Keith, this is Sierra Shepard. She's one of our fine student leaders…”

Sierra watched him as he tried to figure out how to complete his habitual introduction. Would he show Ms. Keith the RULES RESPECT RESPONSIBILITY RELIABILITY banner and compliment Sierra on her fine stitching?

Ms. Keith helped him out. “Hi, Sierra,” she said. “I've read about your case in the paper. I'm sorry.”

She said it without any apparent thought of whether it had been the wrong thing to say, of whether it might be taken as implying a criticism of her new boss, who was never to be criticized in any way.

Sierra smiled at Ms. Keith, relieved to see her breaking the apparent rule:
Pretend you don't know what happened to Sierra Shepard; pretend you don't think it was unfair.

“Thanks,” Sierra said.

“Sierra,” Mr. Besser said then, his voice as rich and smooth as if he had just drunk a long swig of cream straight out of the carton. “Would you step into my office for a minute?”

Puzzled, Sierra followed him into the inner sanctum. She prayed as she sat down in the middle one of the three chairs facing his desk.
Dear God, please please please let Mr. Besser be about to give in.
Maybe he hadn't wanted to announce his change of mind and change of heart in the choir room in front of everyone. Or maybe he had only come to his decision as they had walked back side by side: the principal who had hoped to save the choir trip, and the unselfish seventh grader who had actually saved it. Or maybe Ms. Keith's careless comment had made him finally see himself as others were seeing him.

She tried to keep the hope from shining out of her eyes in an eager, embarrassing way.

“Sierra,” he said after a long moment of waiting, “you were the one who wrote that letter.”

 

34

 

A voice came from inside Sierra, as if played by pushing a button on a CD player. “What letter?”

Waves of hot shame surged from her chest and her neck and washed across her burning face.

Was blushing like a lie detector test? Was blushing admissible as evidence in a court of law?

“Ms. Lin didn't write the letter, signed with her name, that appeared in yesterday's
Denver Post
. She claims she didn't write it, and I believe her. I have no reason to think that she hasn't been a wholehearted supporter of Longwood's zero-tolerance policies. And if she didn't write that letter, then there is someone else who did, and who sent it from her school e-mail account, on a morning that Ms. Lin was here alone because Mrs. Saunders had to be home on family business, during a time when her computer was left unattended.”

Sierra said nothing.

“I called the
Denver Post
and spoke to their editorial page editor. They've printed a correction in today's paper, but of course the correction is buried away at the bottom of a page at the back of the paper, where ninety percent of the readers are likely to miss it.”

The length of his speech had allowed Sierra to collect herself and try to get her face back under control.

She knew what her father, Gerald Edward Shepard, Esquire, would say:
Never admit anything.

She didn't know what she, Sierra Grace Shepard, should say.

So she said nothing.

She forced herself to sit facing Mr. Besser and say nothing. She held his eyes—she wasn't the daughter of Gerald Edward Shepard, Esquire, for nothing—until he looked away, glancing down at his watch as if he had broken his gaze only because he was too busy to waste time in a staring contest with a seventh grader who was twenty-four hours away from expulsion.

“Okay, Sierra,” he said. “Go on back. But if you decide there's anything you want to tell me, I'll be here in my office all morning.”

*   *   *

Julio and Brad weren't there—their suspensions had finished yesterday—and at 8:30 Luke still wasn't there either. Sierra had brought a new book to read—a dystopian novel Lexi had recommended to her, as if her own life weren't dystopian enough. She didn't open it yet to start reading. Her own thoughts bounced inside her head like kernels of popcorn in a popping machine.

What would Mr. Besser do next?

What
could
Mr. Besser do next?

Where was Luke?

Was Luke sick?

Or—this was the thought that made Sierra jump up from her lonely spot at the conference table and begin pacing. Had Mr. Besser summoned Luke into his office for a further round of accusations?

Would Luke tell?

When push came to shove—and hadn't push just come to shove?—would Luke testify against Sierra Shep-turd? Would he derive his own satisfaction from bringing down the perfect girl who thought she was so superior to “kids like him”?

Sierra should have Googled “forgery” to find out what the penalties would be. It was the kind of question her father could have answered so easily—and the kind of question she could never ask him.

Footsteps down the hall.

Luke was there.

“Hey,” Sierra said awkwardly. “I was getting worried. I thought that maybe … you were sick or something.”

“Nope.” Luke's eyes were bright, not with tears but with a wild excitement.

“Did—did Mr. Besser talk to you?”

“Yup.”

The popcorn kernels exploding inside Sierra felt powerful enough to shatter their container and explode all over the suspension room floor.

Luke was apparently going to force her to ask the next question.

“And…?”

Now his face turned back to its old sneering ugliness. “Don't worry. Little Miss Shep-turd is perfectly safe. She has nothing to worry about.”

“Except for being expelled!”

“You won't be expelled,” he said wearily. “Your father will save you, or the
Denver Post
will save you, or 9NEWS will save you. Someone will always come along to save you.”

“But Mr. Besser—what did he say? What happened?”

“This time Luke Bishop saved you.”

“So he asked—”

“He asked me if I wrote the letter to the
Denver Post
.”

“If
you
wrote it?”

“He said he asked you, and you hadn't confessed. He said that the four of us in the suspension room had the biggest motive and the best opportunity, and if it wasn't the good girl, then it was looking like it was one of the bad boys.”

“He didn't really say that.”

“Something pretty close to it.”

“What did
you
say?”

“I said, yes, I did it. And I'm glad I did it. And I'd do it again.”

 

35

 

“Luke!”

His expression had changed from scornful anger to something that looked like hope. Hope that she'd look at him the way he had seen her look at Colin?

“Luke…”

Impulsively she hugged him, even though she didn't want to give him the wrong idea, the idea that she liked him, as in
liked
him liked him.

But as he hugged her back—he was taller than Colin and broader shouldered—as he stood, not hugging her anymore but just holding her, she worried that she might be giving him the
right
idea.

Then she pulled away.

“Did Mr. Besser believe you?”

“Oh, yeah. Or at least, he wanted to believe me.”

“Did he say what he was going to do to you?”

“Guess who's going to have his own expulsion hearing?”

“You're going to be expelled?”

“This suspension I'm on now? It's my third this year. Fighting, fighting, swearing at a teacher. You can't have four suspensions in a year. That makes you a ‘perennially disruptive student,' and they start expulsion proceedings.”

Suddenly Sierra had a new suspicion.

“This suspension. Your third suspension. You did it on purpose. You wanted to be suspended.”

To be with me.

“Maybe.”

Luke grinned at her.

He had an incredibly appealing grin.

How could any girl at Longwood Middle School who'd seen that grin have a crush on Colin Beauvoir when she could have a crush on Luke Bishop instead?

“What else will happen to you? Like—”

She couldn't bring herself to say it:
criminal charges.

“I'm supposed to apologize to Lintbag. That'll be fun, to have a chance to tell her some of what I think about her. I'll be sure to flash my Game Boy in her face when I do. But he didn't mention anything else. Expulsion is the main thing. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last.”