Zero Tolerance Read Online Free Page B

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.
    He stopped her. “You should have called me right then. That’s what you have a cell phone for. Not to text your friends all night long, but to call us in case of an emergency.”
    Sierra felt as if she were facing her father in the courtroom, waiting to see if he was going to stop her for cross-examination after every single sentence.
    â€œWe’re not allowed to use cell phones at school,” she explained. “That’s the rule.”
    â€œNone of this would have happened if you’d called me first.”
    Sierra was curious now. “What would you have told me to do?”
    â€œI’d have told you to put the fool thing away before anyone else saw it, and I’d have sent your mother over to school to switch lunches with you immediately.”
    â€œI couldn’t have left work like that,” Sierra’s mother put in. “Not in the middle of lunch. It’s our busiest time of the day. As it was, I couldn’t even get away until almost three.”
    â€œSo this is what we ended up with instead? Hell, I’d have left my meeting and hightailed it over to your school myself. Okay. Go on. What happened next?”
    â€œWell, I took the knife to Sandy—she’s the lunch lady—and she went with me to the office, and then we gave it to Ms. Lin—she’s the school secretary.”
    Her father interrupted her again. “And neither of those women had the sense to have you call your parents to come get the knife right away, before all this got blown out of proportion? A murderer gets to make a phone call, but a seventh grader who took the wrong lunch to school by mistake isn’t instructed about her legal rights?”
    He was typing furiously on his computer as he spoke.
    Sierra told him about Mr. Besser’s arrival in the office with the other principal and the conversation the two men had had about Longwood’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons and drugs.
    Her father stopped typing.
    â€œOh, this is bad.”
    Sierra’s heart clogged her throat. “It is?”
    â€œI know Besser. My office did some work for his wife’s business years ago. He’s a decent enough guy. A bit in love with himself, as principals tend to be, a man surrounded all day by a bunch of women, spending most of his time bossing around short people.” Her dad gave a mirthless chuckle.
    Sierra would have expected her father to want her to have respect for school principals in general, and her school principal in particular. This was the first time she had ever heard him talk about Mr. Besser in this way. But it was also the first time Mr. Besser had ever done anything to upset him.
    Her father continued: “But, as I said, he’s decent and he means well, and I give him credit for turning the school around, reclaiming it from the druggie kids and their loser parents, and making it a place where smart kids get the education they deserve.”
    Sierra’s dad raked his hand through his thick silver hair. His hair had turned completely gray before he was forty.
    â€œBut now he can’t back down, don’t you see? Because the other guy has heard him do all his grandstanding. Now he can’t do what any reasonable person with half a brain and half a conscience would do and forget all about this. Because