Diana Hennessy

During my senior year Diana Hennessy and I arranged an independent study class in which she and I worked on a novel. We alternated sections, which meant we each had to wait for the other to finish a part before getting to work again. How many pages did we make? More than a hundred, as I recall. I wonder how the manuscript would read today? Eventually I’m going to come across it as I clean out these boxes of papers. We didn’t have a plot or plan. We just made it up as we went along. I don’t think there were any fantasy elements in it, other than the fantasy that a poor writer could get his own apartment in New York City.

Though Diana and I had worked on the school newspaper since we were freshmen and both of us planned to be writers we had a fairly prickly relationship until the after school poetry workshop with Maureen and Zara. Then I know I really came to appreciate her writing and began to enjoy her company. We probably bonded most, however, in Consumer Ed, where we were part of the laughingest table in class. We’d failed the challenge test that would have let us skip the class. I remember staring at the test’s problems and forgeting how to divide. Anyway, it was okay. If I hadn’t ended up in Consumer Ed I might’ve had to take some AP class or something. I don’t mind having escaped that fate.