'Now, these numbers are a secret code, honey,' Arnold Friend explained. 'I wanta introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's my real name and I'm gonna be your friend, honey, and inside the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy."'Ellie brought his transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it there. ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a round, grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. 'This here is my name, to begin with,' he said. He slid out just as carefully, planting his feet firmly on the ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses slowing down like gelatine hardening, and in the midst of it Connie's bright green blouse. She said, 'What's all that stuff painted on your car?' 'Can'tcha read it?' He opened the door very carefully, as if he were afraid it might fall off. She couldn't decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn't come down or go back inside. And at first she's nervous in a flattered, teenaged way, trying to impress a cute boy who wants to take her for a ride.īut the more she stands out there talking to him, the more Connie starts to realize that something is wrong: "Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just what this boy was looking at. She saw one of them while out on the town, a boy with wild, wig-like hair, but they didn't speak. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is a master class in building suspense - even before the gold-painted jalopy pulls up in Connie's driveway, we have a sense that something is. The car drives away.Īnd it's terrifying, not least because it's based on an actual serial killer. And one day, two boys pull up in a car, and ask her to get in. She likes going out with her friends, and rolling her eyes at her mother.
If you haven't read it before (and you should), the story follows a pretty, 15-year-old girl named Connie.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates. But then, freshman year of college, I was handed a short story that made me want to dive straight under my covers all over again: I even started to enjoy a creepy ambiance in my literature, as long as I knew that it wasn't for real. I started to come around as an older teen, when I was introduced to Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Darkand Coraline, but only in broad daylight (I still spent all night cowering under my covers, certain that my bedspread was all that separated me from an army of slavering liches). I was never one for scary stories growing up.
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