The rest of the morning goes about how you’d expect: like a war movie. I track down Mars in the same way a heat-seeking missile tracks down a jet. He’s by his locker when I find him, and not surprisingly, his mouth is flapping.

“That didn’t take long,” I say.

“What?” he says, but his smirk tells me he already knows.

“You’re scum, man,” I say, but that’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. I’m searching every dark corner of my brain for something that will hurt him. I find something I think might work, dust it off, and say: “You and your drunken hillbilly family.” I do my imitation of the hillbilly guy on The Simpsons: “Garsh, Daisy May, you done pooped out another one. Think I’ll call this one Mars, like the candy bar.”

Now his eyes narrow, but his smile just gets bigger.

“Be careful,” he says, “or I won’t have my hillbilly folks drop the lawsuit.”

And the way he says that last part, like the words just aren’t long enough to contain all the sarcasm he’s trying to pack into them, lets me know what an idiot I was to even try, to gamble on that 1-percent chance. It stings a little extra because I let him bait me into it: “We’re friends, right?”

And now he’s just standing there, grinning at me. I tell myself not to, but I can’t help it. I take a quick step forward, my hands coming up as I move. I’m just going to give him a good shove, see how that goes. But before I can, two hands clamp down on my shoulders from behind, strong hands, pulling me up short. I wheel around, and the hands fall away.

It’s Aaron. Of course. He puts one hand back on my shoulder, almost friendly, but still controlling me. “Settle down, man,” he’s saying. “Come on, JD.”

I shake his hand off, and this time he lets me. “Stay out of this, man,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Can’t do it.”

This is such bull. I knew he’d take Mars’s side. I give Aaron a quick look, confirming what I already know. I can’t beat him. Mars starts to say something behind me, almost in my ear, but Aaron shoots him a look and cuts him off: “You too, Mars. You’ve said enough.”

I guess I should be grateful, but I’m mostly just annoyed Aaron is here. I start to walk away just as Rudy arrives. To his everlasting credit, he’s pissed on my behalf. Maybe on his own, too. Everyone knows we’re best friends, so he’s going to get some splatter from Perfumegate.

Rudy is wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt that says JUST DID IT. Our great triumph of second period was convincing Mr. Morill that it’s an “inspirational athletic slogan,” as evidenced by the poorly drawn Nike swoosh above it. Now he’s heading for Mars and has a look in his eyes like he’s going to Just Do something violent. I save Aaron the trouble and put my arm out in front of Rudy. “He’s useless,” I say.

“You might want to pick your friends better,” Mars says to him. “Maybe based on something besides” — he pauses, savoring it — “their scent.”

“You might want to pick yours better,” Rudy tells Aaron.

Now it’s like a four-way, crosswise argument. I do the right thing and just walk away. I’m not going to win this battle, and what would it matter if I did? I’ve already lost the war. Rudy fires a few more individual swears at Mars and then comes with me. We’re gone before any teachers arrive.

“Mars is made of dick,” says Rudy, as if I’m going to argue.

By lunch, everyone knows. Or at least everyone I know knows. We sit with the Goonies again, or at least we try to. Randall and Jesse are already at a table when we get there. They eye us with suspicion, disgust, or both as we drop our trays, but they don’t stand up and leave. But Tal and Junior Goonie First Class Evan spot us early and walk right by the table.

I’m double Kryptonite right now. Juvie basically makes me a delinquent and a lowlife around here. The only people who won’t mind that are the tough kids and actual lowlifes, and they’ll think the perfume makes me a wimp or worse.

Randall and Jesse don’t say much about it. They don’t say much at all. Then, right at the end, Randall goes, “Maybe, uh, maybe you shouldn’t sit here tomorrow.”

“You’re pathetic,” says Rudy, even though we’re the ones left sitting alone.

By the time I get to English I’m so beat down that if I had a car, I’d just cut and go home. But I don’t and I’m really wondering how Janie is going to react. She is, after all, the girl I was dating when I went on my now legendary (by Dahlimer standards) crime spree. Some of them will remember the fight and the rest will just speculate — armed robbery? Auto theft? — because everyone knows they don’t send you away for your first offense.

I guess she’s wondering how she’s going to react too, because she just avoids me until class starts. It’s easy enough to do, sitting four rows away. Meanwhile, Aaron is sitting on the other side of Rudy again, and the two of them have been rapid-fire whispering back and forth.

Class starts and I finally look at the dry-erase board. Mr. Kibbee is standing there and he slowly and clearly writes: Smells Like Teen Spirit. It’s the title of a Nirvana song, and I’m thinking: Oh, please don’t. But he does. He reads us the lyrics to the song and we have to analyze it as poetry. Some of the kids think it’s “unfair to real poetry,” but the rest of us understand immediately that it’s unfair to the song.

It’s debatable, but I consider Nirvana a punk band. Their sound is pretty heavy, and they have lyrics like “I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black.”

Early on, Kibbee asks, “Does anyone know where the title ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ comes from?”

I know the answer, but I don’t raise my hand. I figure I’ll let Kibbee relive his youth, or whatever he’s doing, and tell us himself. But he must suspect that at least one of us knows, and he keeps waiting.

“No one? Really?” he says.

Finally, I raise my hand.

“Yes, JD.”

“Teen Spirit was a kind of girls’ deodorant,” I say. “I think maybe Cobain’s girlfriend wore it. Anyway, someone wrote ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit’ on his wall.”

Kibbee nods and smiles. “Yes, exactly. Excellent, JD.”

For a few seconds, I actually feel kind of good about myself. Then, two rows up, Jefferson raises his hand.

“Yes, Jeff,” says Kibbee. To give you an idea of what a teacher’s pet he is, the teachers are the only ones who call him that.

“So, a kind of girls’ deodorant,” he starts. “Is that like perfume?”

Eighty percent of the class laughs. No one is too uncool to get fat off my corpse today.