Zero Tolerance

by Claudia Mills

  This afternoon? Sierra couldn’t miss French; they were having a quiz on irregular verbs. She didn’t want to miss art. If she missed art, her pot might not be ready for the kiln by Friday, just two days away. And then there was the science lab where they’d be dissecting a worm. And, yes, dissecting it with a knife.

  “Couldn’t you tell Mr. Besser what happened? That it was all a mistake? I have a quiz in French and—”

  “You’ll just have to miss it.”

  “But … can I at least go to my locker to get my French book so I can study while I’m waiting?”

  Ms. Lin shook her head.

  Sierra felt her cheeks burning. She couldn’t believe how unreasonable Ms. Lin was being when it was as completely obvious as anything in the world could be that an honor student like Sierra wouldn’t bring a knife to school on purpose. Maybe Lexi and Em had been right. She should have just hidden the knife in her lunch bag.

  Celeste had been the only one at the table who said nothing. Would Celeste have turned in the knife if she had been in Sierra’s place? Or did she just want to see what would happen if Sierra did?

  Tears pricked Sierra’s eyes. She blinked them back and stared straight ahead. What if…? No. She had clearly done the correct thing by giving the knife to Sandy. If only Mr. Besser would come in soon and straighten this out so that she could be back in French class before sixth period was over.

  3

  It was halfway through seventh period before Mr. Besser appeared, bustling into the outer office from the hallway. He was still in his overcoat and the fur hat that made him look like someone from a Russian movie. Another man was with him, a man Sierra hadn’t seen before. Maybe someone’s dad. But he didn’t look like a dad.

  “Ms. Lin,” Mr. Besser began, “I’d like you to meet Elliot Granger. He’s the new principal over at West Glen Middle School. He’s here to check out some of the terrific programs we’ve put in place at our school.”

  His gaze fell on Sierra. “And some of our terrific students!” he added heartily, giving Sierra his usual big grin.

  Sierra forced a smile as Ms. Lin and the other principal shook hands. Why, oh why, couldn’t Mr. Besser have been alone? How could she talk to Mr. Besser and explain everything with that other principal there? Mr. Besser was busy now, too busy to deal with what was, after all, just a very small misunderstanding. But right now it didn’t feel small to Sierra, not if it was making her miss a French quiz and pottery and maybe even a science lab.

  Mr. Besser and his visitor turned to go into the inner office.

  “Mr. Besser,” Ms. Lin called after him. “I hate to disturb you, but something fairly urgent has come up.”

  Well, it certainly felt urgent to Sierra.

  “A student brought a weapon to school today.”

  Sierra’s breath caught in her chest.

  Mr. Besser’s eyes registered a flicker of irritation. He couldn’t be pleased to have this news item blurted out in front of the visitor he was clearly trying to impress. Then he got his expression back under control.

  Before Sierra could speak, he said smoothly, “Elliot, this will give you a chance to see how we operate here at Longwood. When I took over here, three years ago, discipline was … Well, the kindest way of putting it is lax. As a result, our best students were transferring out in droves to charter schools that took academics seriously and created a climate in which students actually came to school to learn.”

  Mr. Besser gestured to the banner above Sierra’s head. “Every single student knows our core values now. Rules. Respect. Responsibility. Reliability. I can’t say that every single student lives up to them, but at least now we all know what we’re aiming for.”

  His genial smile fell again on Sierra. “In fact, I believe this young lady was one of our fine student leaders who sewed this banner for us. Isn’t that right, Sierra?”

  Sierra suddenly realized: He doesn’t get it. Mr. Besser clearly had no idea that she was the student who had “brought a weapon to school today.”

  She had to tell him, but she didn’t know how to interrupt.

  “How do you handle a weapons incident?” Mr. Granger asked.

  “We have a zero-tolerance policy for both weapons and drugs. No exceptions. No excuses. All our students know that.”

  But surely “No exceptions” didn’t mean no exceptions even for an honor student who brought her mother’s knife to school by mistake. Surely “No excuses” didn’t mean no excuses even for a student leader who turned in the knife the minute she found it.

  Mr. Granger gave an approving nod.

  “Who was it?” Mr. Besser asked Ms. Lin. “Have you called his parents yet?”

  He turned back to Mr. Granger. “And all our students know that zero tolerance doesn’t mean a slap on the wrist, writing on the chalkboard a hundred times ‘I will not bring a weapon to school,’ or a three-day in-school suspension.”

  “So it means…?”

  “Expulsion. Mandatory expulsion. It wasn’t Luke Bishop, was it?” Mr. Besser asked Ms. Lin.

  “No.” Ms. Lin looked at Sierra. “You tell him.”

  This couldn’t be happening. There had to be some way to make it come out right—there had to be.

  Sierra said, “It was me.”

  4

  “It was a mistake,” Sierra said. How many times had she said those words already? How many more times would she have to say them? She was afraid she’d cry if she tried to explain the rest.

  Ms. Lin finally helped her out: “She says the knife was in her mother’s lunch, and the lunches got switched.”

  Sierra let herself glance at Mr. Besser. She had never seen him this way before, as if he had somehow stumbled into a blind trap. He was obviously stalling to give himself time to think about what to do next.

  “Look,” he finally said. “I can’t deal with this now. Mr. Granger has given up his afternoon, taken time out of his busy schedule, to come meet with me. Ms. Lin, call Sierra’s parents and explain what’s happened. Tell them that they need to come and get her and that I’ll meet with them first thing in the morning.”

  Sierra wanted to say, But what about my science lab?

  She didn’t.

  Sierra wanted to ask, But why do you have to have a meeting with my parents when this is obviously just a terrible mistake?

  She didn’t.

  Maybe the other principal would give some kind of chuckle, and it would become a friendly joke—a joke partly on Mr. Besser for just having said all that stuff about mandatory expulsion, with no exceptions ever, for weapons or drugs in his middle school. And partly on Sierra for having gotten herself caught up in such a ridiculous mess.

  The two men disappeared into the inner office, and the door shut behind them.

  “Should I try your father first, or your mother?” Ms. Lin asked Sierra.

  “Can’t I go to eighth period? For my science lab?”

  For an answer, Ms. Lin picked up the receiver and poised her finger, ready to dial.

  “My mother,” Sierra said.

  She gave Ms. Lin the number, and Ms. Lin made the call.

  * * *

  Sierra’s mother didn’t really work. Well, she thought she did, but the kind of things she did all day didn’t seem like an actual job to Sierra. Her mother was trying to write plays. No one was paying her money to write them; she was just writing them because she wanted to. She took it seriously—she went to a playwriting group, and she entered playwriting contests. She had gotten an honorable mention in a contest last year. Sometimes, to make a little bit of money, she substituted in Sierra’s former preschool. That’s where her mother had gone today, with the wrong lunch bag.

  Had her mother even noticed that she had taken Sierra’s lunch? Had she thought to herself, Wait, what about the knife?

  Apparently not.

  Her mother didn’t notice things like that.

  Her father did.

  Just as the dismissal bell rang, Sierra’s mother came bur
sting into the office, coatless despite the January weather, her frizzy hair standing out from her head like a wild halo.

  The first thing she did was gather Sierra into a hug, holding her so close that Sierra could feel her mother’s heart throbbing.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” she told Sierra. “There was no one else to watch the children.”

  Sierra couldn’t help herself. A gulping sob shook her shoulders. It had been too awful. Kept out of all her afternoon classes. The way Ms. Lin had called her “missy.” That terrible trapped look in Mr. Besser’s eyes as if he might really be ready to expel her—to expel her—for one tiny, infinitesimal moment of carelessness as she had grabbed her lunch off the kitchen counter.

  Her mother held Sierra for a long moment. Then she turned to Ms. Lin. “We cannot wait until tomorrow morning to speak to Mr. Besser. I need to see him now.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Ms. Lin said, making a big show of busying herself at her computer. “Mr. Besser is in a meeting.”

  “Where is his meeting?”

  Ms. Lin didn’t answer.

  “He’s in his office, isn’t he? I’m sorry, Ms. Lin, but he is not sending this poor child home to worry about this ridiculousness all night long.”

  Sierra had never seen her mother so angry. Before Ms. Lin had time to leap up and block the door—if she would have done such a thing, which Sierra doubted, even on this bizarrely topsy-turvy day—Sierra’s mother had pushed her way into the inner office.

  “Stop,” Ms. Lin called after her. “You can’t just barge in there like that.”

  Sierra didn’t follow after her mother. She couldn’t bear to see the kindly, affectionate light gone from Mr. Besser’s eyes when he looked at her. She lowered herself back down onto the hard plastic chair where she had already spent her long, miserable afternoon.

  Two minutes later, her mother was back, eyes flaming, cheeks burning.

  “Let’s go,” she told Sierra. Then she turned to Ms. Lin. “Sierra’s father and I will see you tomorrow.”

  Even if Sierra’s mother couldn’t fix this hideous mess, her father could. Her father had to.

  5

  When Sierra turned on her cell phone in the car to check her messages, she had three texts.

  Celeste: Why weren’t you in French?

  Lexi: What did Sandy the lunch Nazi do to you?

  Em: Call me.

  Sierra decided she would call her friends, not just text them, but waited until she was upstairs in her bedroom with the door closed.

  She called Em first.

  “What’s going on?” Em asked.

  Sierra could hardly bring herself to say it. “Ms. Lin and Mr. Besser? They’re making a big deal about this.”

  “What kind of a big deal?”

  “I don’t know. Just a big deal. Like, they wouldn’t let me go to any of my classes, and they called my mom to come get me. My dad’s going to go ballistic when he finds out. Em, what will I do if they expel me?”

  “Get real. They’re not going to expel someone like you,” Em pointed out. “Not for something like this, whatever the rule says.”

  Sierra was lying on her bed, her beautiful four-poster bed with the old-fashioned blue-and-white fabric canopy like the ones in Colonial Williamsburg. Her cat, Cornflake, was lying there with her. It was hard to believe that anything too bad could happen when an overweight orange tabby was purring on her chest, one lazy paw stretched out across her shoulder.

  “I know,” she said, trying to sound confident. “It’s just über-annoying. Now I have to make up the French quiz and the science lab, and it’s, you know, one more thing.”

  “Colin asked me where you were in French class,” Em said.

  Sierra jerked up so abruptly that Cornflake jumped off her chest and settled himself nearby on the blue-patterned log cabin quilt.

  “Did he really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Where’s Sierra?’”

  Sierra laughed. “How did he look when he said it?”

  “Like he always looks. His voice was quiet—you know how it’s almost whispery, sort of?”

  Sierra did. His soft voice made him sound not wimpy, but soulful and poetic.

  She felt embarrassed asking the next question, but she couldn’t resist. “I mean, did he look worried?”

  There was a silence: Sierra knew Em was carefully considering the question. Em never said anything that wasn’t as accurate as she could make it.

  “Not worried as much as puzzled. Because you were there for language arts and math this morning, and then you weren’t there at French.”

  Sierra felt a twinge of disappointment. She didn’t want Colin asking about her out of idle curiosity.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I just said you had some stuff you had to do in the office.”

  “Then what did he say?”

  “He said, ‘But she’s missing a quiz.’”

  That sounded more like being worried than being puzzled. She could hear him saying it, too. But she’s missing a quiz. Colin had definitely been concerned, concerned about her.

  Sierra called Lexi next.

  “You should have just kept the stupid knife in the lunch bag,” Lexi moaned. “Em told you, and I thought so, too. Then none of this would have happened.”

  “Well, you were right, I guess.”

  “Lin is a bitch,” Lexi said.

  A few hours ago, Sierra would have said, Oh, she’s not so bad. And “bitch” was such an awful, ugly word. But right now it seemed pretty accurate.

  “You know what she did to me once?” Lexi went on. “I was running down the hall by the front office—not completely running, but going pretty fast. And she made me stop. Okay, I can see making me stop. But then she said, ‘Now go back to the library, and let me see you walk down the hall like a young lady.’ It was so demeaning. Like I was two. And the bell rang, and she still kept watching me to see if I was walking slowly enough to please her, and I was late for pre-algebra.”

  “She called me ‘missy,’” Sierra confessed.

  “I hate her,” Lexi said.

  “I hate her, too.”

  Sierra didn’t feel like calling Celeste. Celeste’s silence at the lunch table had felt so superior, even smug. But if Sierra didn’t get back to Celeste, Celeste would just keep texting.

  “You weren’t in French,” Celeste said as soon as she answered her phone. “And I heard you weren’t in art or science either.”

  “Well, you know Ms. Lin.” Sierra tried to put the best face on it. “She’s such a stickler for rules. She just has this huge thing about them, so I had to sit there forever to wait for Mr. Besser, and then I couldn’t really talk to him anyway.”

  “Are they going to let you go to school tomorrow?”

  The question punched Sierra like a fist in the stomach. What if she didn’t get to go to class tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that? What if she really did get expelled and never returned to any of her classes ever again?

  She couldn’t let herself think that way.

  “Of course!”

  “Then why wouldn’t they let you go to class this afternoon?”

  “Because Ms. Lin’s crazy.” Sierra still couldn’t bring herself to use Lexi’s word. “And Mr. Besser was busy in a meeting with this other principal who was doing a tour of our school to get ideas for his school.”

  “Sierra,” Celeste said as if she were a grownup trying to get a child’s attention. “Don’t you get it? If anyone brings a knife to school, for whatever reason, they get expelled. You could get expelled for this.”

  Sierra’s chest tightened. What if Em was wrong and Celeste was right?

  “Look,” Sierra snapped. “They’re not going to expel someone for a total and complete mistake! Anyway, I’ve got to go. I have a ton of homework.”

  “Okay,” Celeste said mildly. But then she asked,
“So you’ll be at choir?”

  Sierra wasn’t going to be at choir tomorrow morning. During the before-school choir practice, she was going to be in a conference with Mr. Besser and her parents. But she couldn’t bear to say that to Celeste.

  “Sure,” Sierra said with false bravado. “See you then.”

  Maybe she’d be done with the meeting in time to get to choir after all.

  Or maybe she’d never be allowed to go to a choir practice ever again.

  She pulled Cornflake close to her after she hung up the phone, wanting the comfort of the cat’s warm, plump body cuddled against her, but Cornflake struggled out of Sierra’s embrace and stalked away.

  6

  Sierra had thought her dad might come home early—she knew her mother had called him at the office—but he stayed at work even later than usual, so Sierra and her mother had dinner alone. She heard his car pulling into the garage at half past eight and hurried downstairs to see him.

  Before he even took off his coat he said, “Sorry I’m late. We’re just two days away from trial on the Wilson case. I had to take care of some things tonight in order to clear my calendar for tomorrow morning so that I can go into school with you and your mother and see what the hell is going on there.”

  “I saved you some taco casserole,” Sierra’s mother told him.

  He waved her away. “We had dinner delivered at the office. Sierra, honey, you tell me everything that happened. Okay? Every single thing.”

  Sierra’s mom hung his coat for him in the hall closet as he settled himself at the kitchen table and opened his laptop to take notes.

  Sierra couldn’t decide if she felt relieved or even more frightened. Her dad was an attorney, one of the best in the city, or at least that’s what everybody always told her, including her dad himself. But the grim set of his jaw and the way he drew his eyebrows together made him look as if he was readying himself for a battle, and not a little battle, either.

  Sierra told him how she had found the ham sandwich and then realized she had the wrong lunch. She told him how she had spilled out the entire contents of the lunch bag and seen the knife.