Not My Friend

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Not My FRIEND The piece titled “Where are you going, Where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of a fifteen year old girl named Connie on her summer break. Connie lives with her father, mother and her older sister June. “She had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (225). Her mother with age had lost her looks, She noticed Connie’s habit and scolded her for it. She picked on Connie for being pretty, “what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk” (225). Her mother and aunt always praised June, she was a plain, chunky twenty-four year old still living at home and was a secretary at Connie’s high school. Her father was always working, he was never home. He came home at supper and went to bed. Connie and her friend Betty would go to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. One night a boy named Eddie asked her of she would like something to eat, so she stayed behind with him and Betty went her way, agreeing to meet at eleven. As Connie was sitting with Eddie, “she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers” (226). He was a shaggy black haired boy in a gold convertible jalopy. He stared at her and smiled. She looked away and looked back and he was stilling watching her. “He wagged a finger and laughed and said “Gonna get you, baby” (226). She looked away and her night went on. One Sunday Connie woke up at eleven, her family was leaving to a barbeque at her aunt’s house and she decided to stay home. She was in her room listening to a popular radio program, as she heard a car coming up the drive. The gold jalopy honked the horn four short times. She went to the kitchen and stood at the door. She looked in the car and saw two boys, she recognized the driver, “He had shaggy, shabby black hair that
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