I've been dying to write something about "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" since I was required to read the short story in my junior year of high school.
Standard disclaimers apply. Unbeta'd. Title taken from the lyrics of "Wild One" by Green Day. Thank you for reading.
Connie's eyes fly open. Under the stark glare of the sun, she sits up despite the grogginess clinging to her consciousness, like spiderwebs in a corner. She looks from left, to right, back to left—she is still in the back, on a lawn chair sticking painfully to her skin. She shivers; drenched in a cold sweat, gets to her feet.
A dream. Had it all been a dream?
She creeps around the edge of the house to peer at the long driveway, and sees that it's empty. She blinks once, then twice, just in case something's playing tricks on her. No Ellie. No jalopy. No jack-o-lantern smile. No Arnold Friend. There's nobody around. No one at all.
She spends the rest of the day locked up in the house. With her back against the wall, sitting under where her mother keeps the phone, she sits and waits until she hears a car go up the drive, and she doesn't move until her mother starts pounding on the door, demanding that they be let in. Connie goes and opens the door, says nothing to them as her family comes in from the cooling evening. Her mother fixes her with a strange look, but says nothing as Connie turns from them and goes to her room.
After that day, Connie feels different. It feels like Arnold Friend stuck his hand inside her and left something there, something like a string that pulls taught in the night when she's supposed to be fast asleep. The moonlight will be streaming in through her open window, and she'll be finally growing tired, and she'll feel it: the string, the thread, the wire. Low in her belly. And she'll imagine Arnold speaking to her, all low and quick, and the wire tingles, making her tremble. She turns on her side, facing the bedroom wall, and squeezes her eyes shut.
She does not fall asleep.
When she's up and about, the string is still there. Daylight covers her like a sheet, but it doesn't seem to reach her; her eyes are glazed over for a few days after waking up in the backyard, her movements skittish. When Betty wants to go out, Connie refuses, saying, "June got me in trouble again, can you believe it," before Betty's father comes to pick her up.
Her mother asks, once, "is something the matter with you?"
And, because Connie has the distinct feeling that Arnold Friend, real or not, put something inside her, and doesn't know how to put that knowledge into words, she merely scowls at her mother and turns away.
Eventually, Connie shakes of the feeling. It was one hell of a dream. She spent too much time getting baked in the sun. It didn't mean anything. By the end of the week, she tells herself these things enough times to the point where she almost believes them when she and Betty go out to see a movie.
Summer ends, and Connie is thankful for it. She never did like school much, having always rolled her eyes and pretended to smack gum loudly in the back with her friends as they snickered, but, strangely, she's glad for her days to be filled up. Her full schedule, the work—it used to be such a bummer, a bore, and it still is, but there's something about it, now, that lulls her into some sense of security. Maybe it's false, maybe it's not. But it's like this: the routine helps her forget the dream. Bit by bit, her body cuts away the wire he left, until she feels right as rain—until she's back at letting her hair fall over her shoulder, pointedly ignoring the older boys in her school because she likes the way their eyes follow her.
October comes, and June wants her to carve pumpkins. You dope, Connie wants to say, but does it so her mother will shut the hell up. They sit out front on the porch and clean out pumpkins and Connie would hate it if she didn't think of him, then.
Before she can think better of it, she carves his name on the side. Includes Ellie's, too, but smaller, and near the stem. June asks, smiling, "boys at school?" and Connie doesn't bother to correct her older sister or explain. She concentrates on gutting the pumpkin, and, when it's empty and ready for carving, she sits there for a while, staring, hating that she can recall that dream she had in July so clearly, even after so many weeks and many more dreams.
Connie gets up; ignoring June's wide eyes, she walks out onto the drive, and smashes the pumpkin. You creep, she thinks, kicking gravel up into the remains of the pumpkin before promptly turning around to smile sweetly at her older sister, as if nothing in the world's the matter.
When she goes back into the house, however, she can't shake the feeling of eyes on her. His eyes, if she had to guess, but she shakes her head, attempting to rid herself of him.
For the first time in many, many nights, Connie sleeps soundly. But she dreams of him, leaning against her door-jam; she dreams of him stalking slowly, slowly towards her, trapping her against the wall with his eyes, and she wakes up cold, feeling sick and alone and full of unshed tears.
Only minutes after waking, Connie runs to the bathroom and throws up last night's dinner. Her mother gets out of bed to check her temperature, grim as she says, "you're sick, Connie, go back to bed," which never happens, because Connie has always tried to stay home sick, but it was always June who could fake it real good, or only get a little sick and milk it so it was like she was really sick. And Connie can't be bothered to bask in this brief reprieve from school, doesn't think of it as her luck turning up as she would have last year or the year before.
She spends the day sleeping fitfully, dreaming of Arnold Friend till the sun goes down and she can't sleep no more.