Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

22

“She’s coming!”

Sierra had just finished deleting the new e-mail from Ms. Lin’s Sent folder, so Ms. Lin would have no way of finding it on her computer.

She and Luke reached the suspension room as Ms. Lin was unlocking the office door. Sierra dropped down into the chair next to Julio’s and took a few long, deep breaths to force herself to calm down.

Now that it was all over, she felt overwhelmed with her own daring, and even more with the coolness with which she had executed her revenge. She could have been a master criminal.

She was a master criminal!

She, Sierra Grace Shepard, had just done the most illegal and subversive act of her life, an act that even Luke Bishop hadn’t thought to do.

She was crazy to have done it.

She was wrong to have done it.

But it was already done.

“Did you get your Game Boy?” Julio asked.

For answer, Luke flashed the device before hiding it back in his pocket.

Then he looked over at Sierra. She knew he wanted to ask her what e-mail she had sent from Ms. Lin’s account but didn’t want to talk about it in front of the others. She’d tell him when they were alone, if they were ever alone. Maybe she’d call or text him that evening.

It would feel very strange to be calling or texting Luke Bishop.

Sierra opened her library book, The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank had also known something about being confined in a very small space with people who got on your nerves after a while. Sierra stared down at the page, but it was hard to quiet her racing heart and her scolding conscience.

So she was relieved when Luke broke the silence. “Here’s a question for everybody. In your whole life, which teacher did you hate the most, and why?”

Sierra didn’t hate any teachers. The only adult she had ever hated was Ms. Lin, and she had only hated her since last Wednesday. She couldn’t even make herself hate Mr. Besser, remembering the tears she had seen in his eyes after the horrible meeting with her parents.

Julio took his turn first.

“Mrs. Fletcher in second grade. She could never pronounce my name right. She kept calling me Jule-ee-o, like Julius, or Julia. Like, how hard is it to say Hoo-lee-o?”

“Did you correct her?” Sierra asked.

“I tried, but she was really mean about it, like she knew better how to pronounce things than some little second grader, because she was the teacher, not me.”

“Mrs. Nolan,” Brad said, going next.

Sierra knew who Mrs. Nolan was: one of the math teachers who taught the lowest-level math classes, not the accelerated math sequence that Sierra was taking.

“She made me go to the board for some dumb-ass problem. A whole bunch of us were up there, writing problems on the board. I got the answer wrong. Two girls did, too, and she didn’t make fun of them, but to me she said, ‘Do you want to repeat sixth-grade math, Bradley? I didn’t realize you liked my math class so much that you’d want to stay with me next year.

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