Zero Tolerance Read Online Free

spent her long, miserable afternoon.
    Two minutes later, her mother was back, eyes flaming, cheeks burning.
    â€œLet’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
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    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.
    â€œWhat’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.”
    â€œWhat kind of a big deal?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œGet 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œColin 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.
    â€œDid he really?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œWhat exactly did he say?”
    â€œHe said, ‘Where’s Sierra?’”
    Sierra laughed. “How did he look when he said it?”
    â€œLike 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.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œWhat did you tell him?”
    â€œI just said you had some stuff you had to do in the office.”
    â€œThen what did he say?”
    â€œHe 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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œWell, you were right, I guess.”
    â€œLin 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.
    â€œYou 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