The article describes how one student in a summer enrichment English class used fictional elements and images in comic form to represent her identity and the emotional truth of difficult experiences. The course was taught at an annual summer academy that encouraged academically minded 15-year-old and 16-year-old students to spend three weeks taking courses for enrichment purposes. The students came from a variety of towns and cities from one Midwestern state, hoping to take classes typically not available at their home schools. Initially, the course objectives were for students to understand the system of comics and the opportunities visual literacy afforded to communicative and expressive needs. However, as students investigated both the medium and their pasts through reading and creating comics, important social and political themes common to the teen experience emerged in class discussions: questions of social justice, sexuality, parental strife, challenging authority, suicide, self-confidence, and body image. To further facilitate students' understanding of the medium, nonfiction, and literacy practices, the author encouraged students to create their own nonfiction comics. When writing such comics, students can choose how to recreate situations in which they may not originally have had control. Thus, the course demonstrated how with model examples, discussion, and writing practice, students can use fictionalized elements within accounts of nonfiction while promoting the message rather than diminishing it.