Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life

These final chapters complete Nikki’s character arc and wrap up loose story threads. In Chapter 32, Nikki finally stands up for herself and refuses to do more tattoos because she needs to study and take a break. She’s realizing that the popularity she gains from her tattoo work isn’t worth sacrificing everything else in her life. When Chloe and Zoey sit at MacKenzie’s table, Nikki feels betrayed because Chloe and Zoey are using the attention to better their social status, when it’s Nikki’s tattoos that got them the attention in the first place. Chloe and Zoey soon realize how their actions have affected Nikki, and when they give up their popularity to help Nikki win the art contest, it shows that true friends will be there for us through temptations.

Chapter 33 shows that Nikki still hasn’t completed her character arc, though she’s getting closer. After Nikki tells her grandma about the tattoos and her friends, her grandma advises her to decide how she wants to handle the situation. Throughout the book, Nikki has struggled with Making Judgments Without Facts, repeatedly attributing mistakes to someone else and never taking responsibility for the consequences of her own actions. Here, she acknowledges that she doesn’t like her grandmother’s advice because following it would force her to make a decision and take a stand, which Nikki has thus far avoided doing. Her grandmother says that the school’s social environment doesn’t matter as much as Nikki’s own choices about how to live within that environment. This advice brings the book, and its meditation on Expectations Versus Reality, full circle: Nikki realizes that changing schools has never meaningfully changed her experience of herself as uncool and unpopular and that if she wants to change her life, she’ll have to do it by changing herself, not her environment. Moreover, she’s realizing that occupying a high rung on the school’s social ladder is less important than having real friends and being comfortable with who she is.

Chapter 34 shows the importance of staying organized and making sure we have everything we need. After being overworked with the tattoos, Nikki must stay up late to catch up on schoolwork she didn’t have time for the previous week. As a result, she forgets to set her alarm and oversleeps, leading to a crisis in which she must either accept a ride to school in her father’s extermination van or miss the art contest. Up until now, she has done everything in her power never to be seen with her dad’s extermination van, but here, the art contest is more important than being embarrassed. At school, MacKenzie insults Nikki and the van, causing Nikki to become so distracted that she forgets to retrieve her painting from the ground before her father accidentally drives over it. Even if she isn’t consciously aware of it, Nikki is realizing that MacKenzie’s words need not have power over her. This speaks to The Volatile Emotional Lives of Teenagers—which gradually give way to maturity and reason as teens transition into adults.

The final chapters show Nikki realizing that she has friends after all and that being popular isn’t so important. When she calls the library only to have Chloe and Zoey hang up on her, Nikki is sure her friends don’t care about her, bolstered by the fact that they sat at MacKenzie’s table at lunch. In Chapter 36, Nikki realizes that she was wrong, which completes her character arc. She understands now that not knowing why someone acts a certain way doesn’t automatically mean that person is against her or being mean. Nikki also understands what her grandma was saying about how the school itself doesn’t matter. Westchester is good or bad from moment to moment depending on how Nikki is feeling, but overall, she knows she has a place there. Her decision to ignore MacKenzie’s mean-girl attitude shows Nikki working toward being less concerned with other people’s actions and more concerned with her own reactions.

Nikki’s capitalizations in this section have many different meanings. In Chapter 32, she capitalizes “using” to emphasize both how she feels Chloe and Zoey have been treating her and how disappointed she is with the realization. Similarly, she capitalizes “never” in Chapter 34 to show her feelings. Capitalizing “never” shows how she wants to leave and not come back in that moment, and it also foreshadows her ultimate decision to stay. In Chapter 36, Nikki capitalizes her entire line about wanting to see MacKenzie’s face, showing that, while she’s starting to change, that change is not complete. While she appreciates what her friends did and now understands that MacKenzie doesn’t have power over her, Nikki still would have liked to see MacKenzie be taken down a peg.

In the final chapter, Nikki capitalizes the admission that she is a dork, which symbolizes her completed character arc. It also shows that Nikki accepts her dorkiness, especially because Brandon is also a dork, which makes her feel better about being a dork, too. Nikki has likely known she’s a dork from the beginning, but she didn’t want to admit it and give up her dreams of being popular. Capitalizing it lets her own who she is and shows she isn’t afraid to proclaim it to anyone in earshot.