Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills Page B

somebody is missing? If there’re just seven of us, not eight? What kind of Octave is that?”
    Sudden fury surged from Sierra’s throbbing chest into her burning face.
    â€œSo that’s all you care about? If you get to go? I’m getting expelled for something that wasn’t even my fault, my whole life is being destroyed , and what you care about is how it affects you ? If it inconveniences you ?”
    â€œIt’s not an inconvenience if the choir can’t go,” Celeste said in her most infuriating calm, patient tone, as if she were explaining something to a misbehaving toddler. “We’ve been practicing for months and months—two mornings every single week at seven a.m. And then we got so close to being picked, but had to be the stupid alternate, and now we finally, finally, get this chance … I mean, Sierra, it does affect everyone if you can’t go and then the whole thing gets canceled.”
    Sierra was afraid she might say something so terrible to Celeste that she could never unsay it, never be able to take it back and pretend she hadn’t really meant it after all.
    â€œWell, I’m sorry if my getting expelled is such a huge drag for you,” she said carefully.
    â€œCome on, Sierra, don’t be that way.” Celeste made it sound as if Sierra was the one being selfish and unreasonable. “If it was reversed, if I was the one who got suspended, and you were the one who might not get to go on the biggest and most important choir trip ever, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be disappointed.”
    â€œI wouldn’t blame you.”
    â€œWho said anything about blaming anybody? Except—Sierra, you could have checked before you took the wrong lunch. It would have taken like two seconds to check, and then none of this would have happened.”
    â€œSo you check your lunch every single day to make sure it’s the right one?”
    â€œNo, but I don’t have the same lunch bag as my mom, either. Look, I didn’t mean to get you all upset,” Celeste said.
    â€œI’m not upset.”
    â€œYes, you are.”
    â€œWell, if you were getting expelled, maybe you’d be a tiny bit upset, too.”
    Sierra knew Celeste was thinking: But I would never be getting expelled.
    Only a few days ago, Sierra would have thought the same thing.
    â€œWell, maybe you won’t get expelled, and it will all work out okay,” Celeste said, her voice bright and chipper, as if they were back to being friends again. “And maybe on Friday we’ll be in Colorado Springs, all of us singing together.”
    â€œMaybe,” Sierra said.
    Maybe.
    *   *   *
    It was almost dinnertime before Sierra’s parents got home from their movie date.
    â€œI don’t know how there can be people who live in Colorado and don’t know how to drive in snow,” Sierra’s father grumbled as he came into the family room where Sierra was watching some old movie on TV.
    â€œAre the roads really bad?” Sierra asked, clicking off the TV.
    â€œThe roads are bad; the other drivers are worse.”
    â€œWas the movie good?”
    â€œYour mother liked it.”
    â€œYou liked it, too,” her mother said.
    â€œI didn’t like it . I liked seeing it with you .” He smiled at Sierra’s mother.
    Maybe they were still in love, different as they were, even after all these years.
    â€œDaddy?”
    â€œWhat happened now?”
    Sierra told him about the choir trip. “Daddy, I really, really, really want to go. I have to go. And Celeste says if one person can’t go, the whole trip might have to be canceled. I mean, the name of our choir is the Octave. You really have to have eight people to be an octave.”
    â€œMaybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if the trip got canceled. Let Tom Besser see what his policies have wrought, what opportunities his students are losing