74 pages • 2 hours read
Smile: A Graphic Novel
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Chapter 7
Chapter 7 Summary
Graduation day arrives. Raina’s parents ask her if she wants to take a picture with her friends, but she says that they are not sentimental even as she sees them crying and hugging each other, and she leaves without joining them. Over the summer, Raina enjoys her final stint as a Girl Scout counselor and some long-distance trips. In addition, Dr. Golden removes her fake teeth and reshapes her new front teeth using a curing light and buzzing tool. The next stage of her treatment is correcting her crossbite, which requires placing a rubber band on hooks at the top-left and bottom-right of her braces. The rubber band is an eyesore and makes it difficult for Raina to talk.
Raina dresses her best for her first day of high school, both nervous and excited for the new chapter in her life. Her goal is to start anew, but she still travels with Melissa on the bus and is disappointed when she ends up in the same circle of friends with Karin, Nicole, Emily, Kaylah, and Jenny. Her new English, German, and history classes quickly overwhelm her.
An assortment of dental products now resides in Raina’s backpack: a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, picks, spare rubber bands, and wax. One day, the products fall out of the backpack in front of her friends. Karin tells Raina that she has dog breath. Raina is angry at her and at the others for not defending her. The others try to stay quiet, but they burst out laughing when Raina tells them she is getting a snack and Nicole blurts out “milk bone?” As Raina leaves, Karen and Nicole sneak up on her and pull her skirt down, exposing her leggings.
Embarrassed as everyone in the courtyard laughs at her, Raina races to the restroom and cries. Emily and Kaylah catch up to her, but they treat the incident as a harmless prank. Angry, Raina bolts out of the restroom but runs into a smirking Karin and Nicole. Fighting back tears, she tells the group that she has had enough of their name-calling and disrespect, bringing up Nicole’s yearbook line from years earlier. Afterwards, she doodles pictures of herself towering over Karin and Nicole, happy that she stood up to them after years of taking their jokes for their amusement.
Aside from occasional small talk, Raina stays away from her old friends and is comfortable with her loneliness. During gym class, she meets Theresa, who praises her poster work. Raina starts hanging out with Theresa’s friends, who are also into cartoons and art.
Chapter 7 Analysis
There is a clear visual difference between Aptos Middle School and Raina’s high school. The middle school is a traditional brown structure that comes off like a prison—many outside scenes show that they are surrounded by concrete walls with wire fencing on top. In contrast, the high school has a modern layout with glass and tile walls and no fencing. It is an environment where Raina can spread her wings, but first she must free herself from her old flock.
Even before high school, Raina plans to break away from her friends, and she doesn’t meet up with them after the graduation ceremony. She constructs a new look freshman year, with Telgemeier pointing out her matching clothes and acid-washed jeans, but reverts to her old outfits after realizing her group is “exactly the same” (181).
Raina’s dental regimen is almost over, but the rubber band she wears on her braces leaves her at her most vulnerable, with the band always visible when she talks. Whereas the group found other ways to tease Raina before, now Karin goes directly after her mouth problems.
The climax of Smile is not when Raina completes her treatments but when she stands up for herself after the pantsing. Like the accident that broke her front teeth, Telgemeier does not depict the action—only the aftermath. On a white, borderless background, Raina realizes something is wrong. The next image is detailed and dominates the page as she looks down in dismay as the crowd in the courtyard sees her. Raina’s sorrow erupts into anger in front of Emily and Kaylah, but she retreats into fear when she sees the smug Karin and Nicole, who seem to be “waiting for me to start crying” (190). Repudiating the group injects confidence into Raina, who before could only storm off for a minute before returning. The crude doodle she makes afterwards is the first time the reader sees her use her artistic skills as a form of autobiographical storytelling.
Putting herself at risk of loneliness also leads her to find Theresa and others who respect her for who she is. Highlighting the difference between Raina’s old and new friends is the T-shirt of Bart Simpson, the troublemaking star of the then-new and edgy cartoon The Simpsons. The old friends criticized her for wearing a boy’s shirt, while Raina notices that one of the girls in Theresa’s group is wearing it.
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By Raina Telgemeier
