Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills

out on because of his sanctimonious, self-righteous, irrational, zero-sense, zero-decency crapola.”
    â€œBut that wouldn’t be fair to the others,” Sierra said. “Mr. Besser shouldn’t punish the whole entire Octave, and Mr. Lydgate, too, because of one student’s mistake.”
    â€œThere’re a lot of things Tom Besser shouldn’t be doing right now,” her father said.
    â€œI’m going to take some chili out of the freezer, okay?” Sierra’s mother said. “And throw together some cornbread muffins to go with it. I think that would be a good supper for a snowy night, don’t you?”
    â€œSure, hon.” Then to Sierra he said, “Just give me a few more days, sweetheart. One way or another, your Mr. Besser is going to be one sorry, sorry dude.”

 
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    On Sunday Sierra turned down an invitation from Em and Lexi to go sledding on the steep hill behind the high school. She wanted to stay at home to listen for the phone, sure that Mr. Lydgate was going to call to say that he had convinced Mr. Besser to let her go to the choir concert. Or maybe Mr. Besser himself would call to lift her suspension altogether. How could he not listen to almost four hundred students and eight teachers? As well as practically half the state of Colorado?
    But every phone call was another reporter calling for another quote to enliven the continuing coverage of the story. Sierra didn’t want to talk to them anymore, but her father said it was good “to keep Tom Besser’s feet to the fire.”
    â€œYes, I’m still doing all my homework so I can catch up if they let me go back to class,” she told the reporter for the Denver Post .
    â€œThere’s a big choir trip I really don’t want to miss,” she told the Associated Press.
    A reporter from a newspaper she had never heard of asked her if she thought students should be allowed to bring weapons to school.
    â€œNo, but no one should be expelled just for making an honest mistake.”
    She felt bored hearing herself say the same things over and over again, in the same words, in the same earnest, sincere tone of voice. This was something she had never guessed: that being famous would be so boring.
    *   *   *
    School was open on Monday. It took more than a foot and a half of new-fallen snow to close schools in Colorado, especially when the snow plows had all day Sunday to ready the roads for rush-hour traffic.
    Two new kids arrived in the suspension room shortly after the first bell—both eighth-grade boys. Sierra learned that the short one with the sharp, ferret-featured face had swiped a handful of candy bars on Friday when the jazz band’s snack-sale table had been left unattended; the tall, dark-complexioned one had spray-painted an obscenity on the outside wall of the gym late Sunday night and been seen by a neighbor who called the police.
    My new friends, thought Sierra.
    â€œWhat did you do?” Shoplifter Brad asked Luke and Sierra.
    â€œI got in a fight,” Luke said.
    â€œI brought a knife to school,” Sierra said.
    She didn’t add any explanations. There was a bizarre delight in representing herself as so openly, brazenly bad.
    Brad looked at her with new respect, but Graffiti Artist Julio said, “She’s the one who was on TV.”
    Brad didn’t look any less impressed. Televised coverage didn’t make a crime any less sensational.
    â€œWow,” he said.
    â€œYeah, it’s pretty cool to be suspended with a big celebrity,” Luke sneered. “The perfect honor student who never did anything wrong in her life, and look how unfair it is that someone like her should get in trouble.”
    Last Friday, when it had been just the two of them, Sierra had felt that she was starting to get to know Luke a little bit and even like him a little bit. Why was he being so hateful now?
    â€œWhat got into you?” she