Whatever Happened To…

Remember whatsername? No no, the other one!

Illustration by DALL·E: “color drawing of high school teenagers male and female in chemistry laboratory working on experiments in 1975”

For the past two years or so I’ve been working on turning the series of short stories into a book. It’s about a couple of high schoolers in the 1970s who agree to have a practice dating relationship to help prepare them for college. I ran the first draft past Roz Warren, Writing Coach, who gave me many suggestions for improvement. (Still working on it, Roz.)

The book ends (currently) with the kids twenty years later, long ago gone their different ways but meeting up again. So what are they up to after all that time? I had the guy (Kyle) working at Google; it was a minor plot point. I had the gal (El) doing… um, some sort of business consulting? I never made it clear, and it didn’t figure into the story, so who cares?

But now it bothers me. (Never mind why, it just does. Okay?)

Scenes that take place in the high school chemistry lab I imagined based on my own high school lab experience. So James in the novel is based on Jim, my lab partner; Pat, El’s lab partner, is based on Patricia (no, I didn’t get creative with names— shut up) who sat across the bench from Jim and me; and while El’s intelligence and personality is based on my very smart first and second wives (Linda was a MENSA member, Deb was her class valedictorian), for appearance¹ I thought of Betsy…