Fate: Predestined Or Instigated?

About two years ago I was invited to go out with some friends. As I was getting ready I felt really tired and decided I would pass on the invite. They begged and pleaded with me as they always did anytime I turned them down. The next day I got a call from one of the friends I was supposed to be with the previous night. My friends unaware, were driving with a guy who was drinking and hit a telephone poll. The driver was knocked unconscious and luckily my friend got away with a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm and some bumps and bruises. If I had gone that night, I would have been sitting in the back of the truck. The girl in the back didn't make it. Some say luck was on my side, others believe God had other plans. Connie is a fifteen year old girl in the story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", who's fate wasn't so auspicious.

Connie was an egotistical teenage girl who was not very family oriented. Her mother was always comparing her to her plain, chunky sister who could do no wrong. Her father wasn't around much and her mother picked at her so much that it made Connie hate her mother. Because of this she had two personalities. "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home" (Joyce Carol Oates, 655). She walked different and seemed older when she was away from home. When she went out with her friends, she heard music in her head and was happy to be alive. She knew she was pretty and that meant everything to her.

One Sunday, Connie's parents and sister went to a barbeque at her aunts house. Connie of course, did not want to go and instead lied out in the sun, day dreaming about boys. When it got too hot, she went inside the house. As she sat on her bed listening to the radio for hours, she suddenly heard a car coming up her drive. When she opened the screen door she saw two boys and she recognized one. The familiar one replied, "I ain't late, am I" (Joyce Carol Oates, 658). Connie told him she didn't know him in a stern way and the boy asked if she wanted a ride. She was intrigued by him. He introduced