Of course I should have known something wasn’t right about the cartoon Frankenstein had drawn of Mr. Huber. Nothing could be that easy—not with Frankenstein, anyway. Two days later, when the paper came back from the printer, we really had a problem.

The Icon has to be taken to Corn Valley to be typeset and printed on account of Ida doesn’t have its own newspaper. Mrs. Noble usually takes it, picks it up, and brings it back to the school. But this time Frankenstein volunteered to help. His father was going to Corn Valley anyway and he’d just ride along. Mrs. Noble agreed, and we all thought that Frankenstein’s outburst, when he’d called the school a “racist prison,” was just one of his temper tantrums and he was already over it.

On Friday Frankenstein came in with the papers, printed and tied together in a neat bundle. He had removed the special copies that Mr. Huber wanted to give away and put each one in a big envelope with the person’s name printed on the front: for example, Ken Ashton, Mayor. Mr. Huber was real impressed and immediately sent his secretary to put the copies in the mail. Because he was so busy, he didn’t take time to look at any of them, which isn’t that unusual. Even Mrs. Noble usually just picks up the papers and delivers them without checking them over. This time that was a big mistake.

The papers were handed out throughout the school during second period, and it took only a few seconds for the uproar to begin. On the second page where Mr. Huber was supposed to be standing with a halo of light was Frankenstein’s other drawing—Mr. Huber sitting on the toilet.

A loud whistle interrupted every classroom in the school. Then came Mr. Huber’s voice. “This is your principal speaking. I have an emergency announcement. All teachers are to collect each copy of the school newspaper immediately. I repeat, every copy of The Icon is to be picked up now!” Smoke was practically coming out of the speaker box in the corner of the ceiling.

A few minutes later, a pink pass came from the office. It had my name on it. Coach Parnell, my history teacher, told me to go to the office.

Frankenstein, Debbie, and Mrs. Noble were all there. Mr. Huber, his face as red as rhubarb, was pacing behind his desk. He was swinging his tomahawk in the air and making a kind of steaming sound like when the car radiator overheats. Finally, he stopped walking and faced us.

I thought he was about to speak, but that hissing sound kept coming out of his throat. He shook his head real hard and started pacing again.

He coughed. “Fortunately the newspapers for our community leaders have not been delivered yet,” he said finally. “I shudder to think …” He stopped in the middle of the sentence and slammed his hand on his desk.

Mrs. Noble spoke up. “Honestly, Mr. Huber, I am just as shocked as you are. I’m sorry.”

Mr. Huber’s voice came out in little spurts. “Sorry … isn’t … good … enough. Who—who—who is responsible for this—this outrage?” he spluttered. Then he shook his head again. I looked over at Debbie and she stood up.

“Mr. Huber, I have a confession to make. I did it. I switched the cartoon at the last second. Nobody knew about it. I know this was grossly immature and selfish.” A tear ran crookedly down Debbie’s scarred cheek. I looked over at Frankenstein.

He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head down. The tops of his ears burned red.

“Debbie,” Mrs. Noble began, “you know that’s not true. That wasn’t your drawing. Franklin, don’t you have something to say?”

Debbie spoke up real quick. “I didn’t say I drew it. But I put it in the paper. There’s nothing wrong with drawing something like that, in private. Publishing it was a mistake. And I take full responsibility.” She said it with such force that I almost believed her.

But she didn’t fool Mrs. Noble. “Mr. Huber, I do not believe this is Debbie’s fault. Though I have no proof, I believe another individual is entirely responsible,” she said, staring straight at the top of Frankenstein’s bowed head.

“Young man,” Mr. Huber boomed, “did you switch these cartoons?”

Frankenstein didn’t make a sound.

“I’m speaking to you. I expect you to look at me.” Mr. Huber was standing over Frankenstein, who finally shook his head no.

“Okay, then. Debbie has taken responsibility. She’ll be the one who is punished,” Mr. Huber said. “And there will be no more newspapers at Eli Whitney.”

“Mr. Huber, please don’t punish the whole student body,” Mrs. Noble pleaded. She said she’d make sure nothing like this happened again, that we were just adolescents, learning. When she took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with her lace handkerchief, Mr. Huber’s shoulders seemed to relax a little.

Debbie said she’d write the school a public apology, that she’d do anything to keep the paper.

Mr. Huber turned his back to us. “You’ll agree to print the other cartoon. Debbie will receive one week of in-school suspension, starting immediately.” She’d have to sit in a little cubicle in the gym foyer and do her work alone, thinking about her crime.

I couldn’t take it. I looked over at Frankenstein again. “How can you let Debbie do this? You know you’re responsible, you—” Debbie interrupted me.

“Mr. Huber, Jesse and I are best friends. She’s just trying to help me. I know what I did and I’m ready to pay.” She picked up her books and stood waiting at his desk.

Frankenstein and I were told to go on to class and not to say one word in the hallway. I felt sick about Debbie being sent to school jail, but one thing kept ringing through my head. She’d called me her best friend.

The following week everyone was talking about Debbie.

“Did she really know about that X-rated stuff in the paper?” some kids in my math class wanted to know.

“Of course not,” I answered. “She’s got more sense than that. If you really want to know what happened, ask Franklin Harris.”

The crowd moved from me to Frankenstein’s desk, surrounding him like a swarm of locusts. I heard him say that he wanted to be left alone, and when I looked back he’d put his head down on his desk and covered it with his jacket.

Debbie did exactly what she’d promised. She wrote a public apology, which was pinned to every bulletin board in the school. And she, served her suspension, never saying a word to anyone. I still couldn’t understand why she’d taken the blame—and for Franklin Harris, of all people.

A week later Debbie and I were back working on the paper before school. Thankfully, Frankenstein was absent because of an orthodontist appointment in Corn Valley. I asked her why she’d helped him.

“He’s never done anything for you,” I said. “For one thing,” Debbie answered, “having someone confess gave us a better chance of keeping the paper.”

“Yeah, and it should have been Frankenstein.”

“Jesse, you and I both know that was not going to happen. For another thing, I just decided to let this be my onion.”

“Your onion? Not that it doesn’t make sense or anything,” I said.

“Remember?” she replied. “It’s on our masthead. ‘I only gave you an onion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that’s all, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah, now it makes sense,” I said sarcastically. I never had understood that onion bit on the top of our paper.

“Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was in The Brothers Karamazov.”

“You mean Theodore?” I asked.

“No, Fee-a-door. It’s Russian.”

Mrs. Noble, who had just walked to the door, popped her head in, “He also wrote Crime and Punishment. I don’t remember anything about an onion in Brothers, though. A good crossword puzzle question.”

Debbie explained. “There was this lady who did only one nice thing her whole life. She pulled a tiny onion out of her garden and gave it to a starving woman.”

“That’s nice? I don’t even like onions.”

Debbie continued. “Well, when the lady dies, she ends up in the lake of fire. God sends an angel to rescue her. The angel’s got that same onion with her. She tells the lady to grab on to the green part and she’ll pull her out of the fire. So the woman reaches out and when she does, everybody else in the lake grabs on to her because they want out, too. Well, she can’t stand it. She starts kicking them away and pretty soon, the onion breaks. Nobody gets out.”

“That doesn’t sound very hopeful to me,” I said.

“The onion, one small deed, could have had a lot of power—that is, if the woman hadn’t been so selfish.”

“So? I still don’t get it.”

“It’s the newspaper that’s important, and at this time in his life, Franklin just couldn’t do the right thing. I had to help, or we’d all have gone under.”

I didn’t think it was fair for her to have suffered for a week, having to do her homework and eat lunch alone, but she said it really wasn’t bad at all. “I kind of enjoyed it,” she told me. “It’s quiet down there. You can get a lot done and still have time to read a good book in your spare time. I just about finished Moby Dick.”

While she was suspended, five kids said they might help with the paper. I guess they figured with the cartoon and Debbie getting in so much trouble, working on The Icon was really pretty cool.