“But, anyway,” she said, “with Anne Frank, it’s not like Anne is trying to make anybody cry. You cry because of what happened to Anne, and that’s just a fact.”
She paused.
“How long is your suspension this time?”
“Three days.”
Sierra didn’t think she should tell Luke that she was glad he had been suspended again. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
But she was glad. She really was.
* * *
After school the Channel 9 van was there, but no reporters from any other stations.
“Sierra!”
The blond reporter felt like an old friend now.
Sierra hadn’t realized how much she had missed the daily TV interviews until she felt the camera trained on her face once more to catch her every fleeting expression.
The world did care what happened to her.
“Sierra, the expulsion hearing is on Friday. That’s just two days away. What do you think the superintendent will rule in your case?”
“I think I’ll get to stay.”
Actually, she had no idea, but she knew that was what her father would want her to say.
“Even though school policy explicitly states that any possession of any weapon on school grounds for any reason means automatic expulsion?”
Sierra nodded. “It just doesn’t make sense to expel someone for a mistake.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
“There have been some voices raised in your support over the last few days. Eight teachers signed the school petition protesting the principal’s decision. And just this morning, in the Denver Post, a member of the school staff wrote a letter sharply critical of the principal’s actions.”
Sierra tried to keep her cheeks from flushing as they had before.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Colin leaving the school. Maybe he would come over and rescue her yet again by telling the blond reporter about the choir trip boycott.
Until then, she had to make some reply.
“I think it’s great that people are speaking out.”
Colin was with someone, a girl who looked like Celeste. It was Celeste.
Maybe he was trying to talk her into joining the boycott, speaking softly in his intense, persuasive way. Even smug, self-righteous Celeste wouldn’t be able to hold out against an appeal made in Colin’s low voice, the direct gaze of Colin’s gray eyes.
They were coming down the front steps of the school.
They were still talking.
He was holding her hand.
30
Sierra had no idea what else the blond reporter asked or what else she replied.
Colin and Celeste came closer. They had stopped to watch her being interviewed.
Five minutes ago Sierra would have been glad to have Celeste see her back in the media spotlight. Celeste might not think Sierra had suffered an outrageous injustice, but obviously 9NEWS did.
Now she didn’t care anymore if she was expelled. She wanted to be expelled, and the sooner the better, so that she would never have to spend another minute of her life at Longwood Middle School. Whatever her father said about fruits and nuts, she was going to transfer to Beautiful Mountain. She would tell her mother to call them tomorrow. Or they could stop by the school on the way home to tell Jackie in person.
Colin and Celeste?
Celeste and Colin?
A sharp knife of heartbreak and humiliation—much sharper than her mother’s apple-cutting knife—stabbed itself into Sierra’s heart.
“I know it’s tough,” she heard the reporter say. “Just remember, Sierra, you have a lot of supporters around the state of Colorado who are out there cheering for you.”
The interview was over.
Colin and Celeste had walked on. At Celeste’s urging? Did Celeste suspect Sierra’s crush on Colin? Sierra had taken such pains to hide her feelings from Celeste. If Celeste had known, would it have made any difference? Or would it only have made this moment that much more excruciating?
Sierra stumbled toward her mother’s car.
“What is it? What happened?”
Sitting beside her mother in the front seat, Sierra leaned her head against the glass of the window, unable to let her mother’s worried eyes probe her face.
“What did they do to you? Was it Mr. Besser? Or one of the other kids in suspension? Tell me. You have to tell me, or I’m going to march into the office right now and find out myself.”
“Nothing happened!”
“What do you mean, nothing happened? This is cruel, what they’re doing to you, cruel. I’m going in there and telling Mr. Besser that enough is enough.”
“No! Don’t go in there. There’s nothing anyone can do, or Daddy would have already done it.”
“Actually, your father called me just now, and told me there have been some developments, there is something he can do. But I’m not willing to wait until that charade of a hearing. Do you want to wait here, or do you want to come in with me?”
Her mother had already unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Mom. This. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. That.”
“Then what does it … Oh.” Her mother sighed and said just one word: “Colin.”
Sierra didn’t bother to tell her mother that she was right.
“Okay, honey, let’s just go, then.” Her mother rebuckled her seatbelt and turned the key in the ignition. “Do you want to stop for ice cream on the way home?”
“Ice cream?”
“It actually does help. In these situations. Trust me on this one.”
* * *
“You knew?” Sierra shrieked at Em, who was sitting next to her on her bed.
Em clapped her hands over her ears. Cornflake jumped off Sierra’s lap and streaked away.
As soon as they had gotten home from the ice cream parlor, Sierra had called Em: “It’s something terrible. Can you come over right now?”
Ten minutes later, Em was there, perched on Sierra’s bed behind Sierra’s closed door. But when Sierra blurted out, “Colin likes Celeste,” Em’s face failed to register the shock Sierra had expected.
“You knew, and you didn’t tell me? You just let me keep on liking him? And talking about him? And all the while—”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t know until fifth period today. I sort of suspected yesterday, but it wasn’t until—”
“What made you suspect yesterday?”
It was sick, but she couldn’t help herself, she had to hear Em tell her, with Em’s famous attention to every tiny detail.
“Okay. So in French class? Before Madame Moline began? They were talking together. You know how she sits on the other side of him from where you sit. They were talking about you.”
“About me.” Sierra swallowed hard. “Who said something first?”
“Colin.”
Oh, Colin …
“He said to Celeste, ‘I think you should join the boycott.’”
“How did he look when he said it?”
Not that she needed to ask. Em would tell her anyway.
“His voice was really quiet and intense, you know how he is, like he’s soooo serious, like what he’s saying matters to him soooo much.”
Yes, Sierra knew exactly how Colin was.
“And she said, ‘But we all worked so hard to get this. We earned this.’ And he said, ‘Sierra earned it, too.’”
Was it possible to die of love? Of love for a boy who was holding the hand of your friend?
“And she said, ‘I feel terrible about Sierra, too.’”
Did she feel so terrible? If she did, Sierra certainly hadn’t noticed it.
“But then she said, ‘Colin, I think it’s great what you’re trying to do for Sierra, but I’m sorry, this trip, it just means so much to me to get to go, and now it’s all ruined.’”
Sierra helped out with the story, even though she hadn’t been there. “And then she had tears in her eyes, actual tears, not making h
er eyes look red and puffy, but making them look big and shiny, and there was one tear glistening in her eyelashes.”
“You’re good,” Em said admiringly to Sierra. “You really are good. Yes! And then he reached over…”
Could Sierra stand to hear the rest?
“And he put his hand on hers. Sort of like, to comfort her. And he said, ‘I know it’s disappointing. I’m disappointed, too.’”
“And then he forgot to take his hand away,” Sierra interjected.
“Yeah. He kind of left it there. And he said, ‘I wish I could convince you. Are you going to be around after school today?’ And she nodded and said, and her voice was kind of shaky, ‘I could meet you by the tree.’”
The huge oak tree on the school’s front lawn was the school’s designated meeting place.
“And then Madame Moline said, ‘Bonjour, mes enfants!’ And class began.”
“So what about today? What happened today?”
“When they came into French class—” Em began.
“He was holding her hand,” Sierra finished the sentence.
“Yeah.”
“But at lunch today, during 4A, he told me Jolene had joined the boycott,” Sierra said. “He didn’t say Celeste had joined it.”
“Maybe he’s still trying to talk her into it, and now she’ll join because she likes Colin so much.”
“When she wouldn’t do it for me,” Sierra said. Her mouth tasted of bitterness, as if she had swallowed a huge mouthful of unripe plum.
“Well,” she made herself say, “Colin has a right to like anybody he wants. If he wants to like Celeste, he has a right to like Celeste. And it wasn’t as if I ever told Celeste I liked Colin. So she has a right to like Colin, too.”
She supposed that was even true. But right now she was too tired—too profoundly weary and heartsick—to care.
Except that she did care.
Oh, Colin!
31
Sierra was in bed for the night, half asleep, when her father got home. It wasn’t that late, a bit past nine o’clock, but she was too drained from her day to start a new book or watch anything on TV. She didn’t even want to watch herself on TV. No, she especially didn’t want to watch herself on TV.
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.
Zero Tolerance Page 11