Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Summary | Detailed Summary

Connie is fifteen years old, a pretty girl who knows she is pretty. She looks into mirrors frequently to check her appearance and pays close attention to how other people are affected by it. She is much different from her older sister, June, as her mother continually reminds her. June is 24 years old, not attractive but dutiful and steady in her habits. Connie and June's mother constantly compares Connie's actions with June's, generally considering the older sister to have more sense and substance than Connie does. Connie's mother has two sisters to whom she often complains about Connie while praising June. Connie's father works much of the time away from home. When he is at home, he is tired and just wants to eat dinner, read his newspaper, and go to bed. There is little interaction between the father and his wife and daughters.

During a hot summer, on vacation from school, Connie discovers that her prettiness attracts boys, and she makes use of this fact. Her mother allows her to go out alone with her girl friends because June has already established this as safe behavior by going out with her own girl friends. The father of Connie's best friend drives them to a shopping plaza in town so they can browse the stores or go to a movie. Connie and her friend use their new freedom to look for boys. Connie knows that her long blond hair, shorts, and charm bracelets attract the attention of strangers, and she likes that. She cultivates differences in her behavior out in public. While things she does may seem childlike at home, they take on a sexual color when she is anywhere else.

The girls often go to the movies as their parents expect, but other times they cross the highway near the mall to a drive-in restaurant where older kids congregate. Connie is drawn to the place by its forbidden quality and by the music that always plays in the background. As the girls walk through the parking lot of the drive-in. several boys call out to them, but they do not like these boys. Therefore, they ignore them and go inside. They sit at the counter and listen to the music, hoping to attract the attention of more interesting boys.

One night a boy named Eddie invites Connie to leave with him. She has mixed feelings, wanting to go with him but not wanting to leave her best friend alone. She goes with Eddie when he assures her that her friend will not be alone for long. Connie feels joyful at just being alive as they walk together across the parking lot; she attributes this feeling to the music. Connie notices a shaggy-haired boy watching her as she passes his gold-colored convertible jalopy. The boy grins at her and says he is going to "get" her. She turns away from him, but looks back as she walks on and sees he is still watching her.

Connie and Eddie spend three hours together, first having hamburgers and Cokes, and later parking in an alley a mile away from the restaurant. He drops her off in front of the mall just before eleven o'clock when her friend's father picks them up. Her friend is there, waiting, and they acknowledge each other's clandestine experiences with sarcastic remarks about the movie they were supposed to have seen.

Connie hides her secret life from her mother who has no idea of what her daughter does on her evenings out. Connie feels guilty about fooling her mother, thinking that she is so simple and kind that it is cruel to pretend she is different from the girls her mother has heard about. Sometimes, Connie and her mother can almost get along and have coffee together like friends, but then some issue arises to set them against each other again.

One Sunday, Connie's family is scheduled to go to a family barbeque. Connie refuses to go, contemptuous of such a gathering. June is ready to go, of course, dressed too formally for the casual outing. Connie tells her mother she wants to stay home and dry her hair in the sun. Exasperated and angry, her mother agrees to leave Connie alone.

After her family leaves, Connie sits in a lawn chair in the sun with her eyes closed, thinking about the boy she had been with the previous night. She languishes in the sun, thinking about how nice the boy had been to her, how sweet the experience was, and how it was unlike anything that June might expect. When she opens her eyes, Connie is disoriented, surprised to be in the backyard, and thinking that her house looks very small. She decides that it is too hot to stay outside any longer.

She goes inside the house and turns on the radio. She listens to the popular Bobby King's radio program for an hour and a half, singing along with the songs and hearing the dedications that boys sent to girls over the radio in the form of specially requested music. Connie notices how the music fills her with joy.

After a while, she hears the sound of a car coming up the long driveway to her house. She knows it cannot be her family returning because it is too early. She looks out the window and sees that it is a car she does not recognize, a gold-painted jalopy. When it arrives at the house, the horn beeps four times, like a signal that Connie is supposed to know. She goes into the kitchen and approaches the back door slowly. She stays behind the screen door and looks at the two boys wearing sunglasses who are in the car. She thinks the driver might be the shaggy-haired boy who spoke to her in the drive-in parking lot the night she went away with Eddie.

The boy has a friend in the car with him. His friend, Ellie, pays no attention to her, but listens to the transistor radio he is holding. To Connie, the boy looks like all the boys she knows. He talks like them too, but he is very confident when approaching her. He says he and his friend have come to take her for a ride. Connie, who has perfected her flirting technique, pretends she does not care about him or his invitation. She says she does not know who he is. The radio in Connie's house and the transistor radio in the car are tuned to the same station. The boy comments on how great the radio program is, and Connie agrees. She is put off-balance by the boy because she cannot see what he is looking at. His eyes are hidden by a pair of mirrored sunglasses. She notices there are words and numbers painted all over his car and asks him what they mean. He explains that his name is painted on the car: Arnold Friend. He says some of the phrases are jokes and that the numbers are a secret code. He asks if she will come out of house and look at them. She declines his offer to go for a ride. She tells him she has other things to do. He laughs at this statement, saying he knows that she set aside this Sunday for him. He calls her by name, which confuses her. She asks how he knows her name and then definitely remembers him as the boy in the parking lot of the drive-in.

Arnold Friend repeats that he has come to take Connie for a ride. He tells her that he has taken a special interest in her since he first saw her at the drive-in. He knows whom her friends are and that her parents and sister are gone for the afternoon. He knows that they will not be back soon. He again tells her she should come out of the house and go for a ride with him. He says Ellie can sit in the back seat and she can ride up front with him. He starts to recite the names of all her friends. Connie asks him how he knows all those people, since he is a stranger. Arnold Friend tells her that he is not a stranger, and that he comes from the town. Connie is doubtful of this and tells him that she would have remembered seeing him around if it was true. He is flattered by this and relaxes a bit, tapping time to the music from Ellie's radio.

Connie looks at his car again and starts reading the expressions and phrases that are written on it. She recognizes one of the phrases as a so-called "in" expression used by her friends the previous year. Arnold Friend says she is hard to handle, but assures her that he is her friend. He tells her he put his "mark" on her when she passed him in the parking lot, and he draws an "X" in the air with his finger.

Connie continues to watch him from behind the closed screen door of her house. The more she looks at him, the more she notices details of his appearance and his way of talking, and the less comfortable she feels. She thinks that there is something not quite right about his appearance. She suddenly asks him how old he is.

At this question, Arnold Friend stops smiling at her, and she can see that he is much older than she first thought. She thinks he is at least thirty, maybe older. He tells her that he is eighteen. She doubts it, but then he grins at her again and begins talking about how crazy his friend Ellie is. Connie sees Ellie still listening to the radio and notices the clothes he is wearing and how pale and skinny he is in comparison to Arnold Friend. She comments that he does seem kind of strange. Arnold Friend picks up on this and starts joking with Ellie about how strange he is. He jokes until Ellie turns to face Connie for the first time. Then Connie sees that Ellie is older too; she thinks he looks a 40-year-old baby. When she sees that Ellie is not a kid either, she tells Arnold Friend that they have to leave.

Arnold Friend will not leave, though. He says they just came out to take her for a ride since it was Sunday. He says he does not care about who she was with last night because today she was going to be with him. Then he tells her she should come out of the house. She declines and says again that they had better leave. He says they will not leave without her. Arnold Friend tells her that she should not fool around with him. He puts his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were wearing a wig. Connie just stares at him and feels suddenly dizzy with fear. She tells him that if her father finds him with her it will be bad for him. Arnold Friend says he knows her father will not be coming because he is at the barbeque. Then he describes the barbeque as if he could see it in front of him. He tells Connie that she is going to do what he says, that she will come out of the house and sit in the front seat of the car with him, and that he is her lover.

The remark shocks her, but he goes on to describe to her how he knows all about her and how it will be when they are together. He says he will be nice, that he is always nice the first time, and that she will not be able to get away. Connie tells him to shut up, that people do not say the kinds of things he is saying. She becomes increasingly afraid the longer Arnold Friend talks to her. She tells him to go away or she will call the police.

At this statement, Arnold curses at her, then smiles again. He tells her what is going to happen next: he promises that he will not come in the house unless she calls the police. If she picks up the phone, then he will not have to keep his promise. Connie tries to lock the screen door, but he tells her that will not keep him out if he wants to come in. She asks what he wants, and he says he wants her. He says he picked her out that night in the parking lot and knew that she was the one. She tries to convince him that her father will be back soon to pick her up, but Arnold Friend knows that her father is not coming.

Connie notices that he almost loses his balance while making a mock bow to her and realizes that his boots do not really fit him, that he has stuffed something in them to make himself appear taller. Connie stares at him and at Ellie out in the car. Ellie asks Arnold if he should disconnect the phone. Arnold tells him to shut up. Connie says again that she will call the police, and Arnold repeats that if she does he will come in the house. He says she should come outside to him. Connie tells him he is crazy. Ellie asks again if the phone should be disconnected. Arnold tells him again to shut up and to stop bothering him, that this situation has nothing to do with him. He tells Connie to be a good girl and come out to him.

She asks what he is going to do. He says just two or three things. He tells her that her life in this house is over and if she does not come out, then he will hurt her family. She panics and runs for the phone. She screams into the phone, calling for her mother, but she is incapable of dialing a number. She just screams.

When she is finished screaming, she finds herself sitting on the floor. Arnold speaks to her from the doorway, telling her to put the phone down, and she does. Connie feels only emptiness and thinks about how she will never see her mother or sleep in her own bed again. Arnold says her father's house is nothing but a cardboard box that he can knock down any time. He again describes how he will take her out to a nice field in the sun and how he will hold her tightly so she won't even think of getting away. Then he says she should come outside to him so they can leave before her family returns.

Connie feels her heart pounding like it was a something that did not belong to her. Arnold says that if she does not want her family to get hurt she should come outside to him. He directs her every move as she walks across the kitchen to the screen door. Arnold stands outside the door with his arms open for her. She pushes the door open slowly and watches herself move into the sun where Arnold was waiting. She notices as if for the first time the vast landscape behind and around the figure of Arnold Friend. She does not recognize the land but she knows that she is going to it.