A week later announced the annual Halloween dance. Lance was excited about it since they didn’t have those dances at the private school he was before. They didn’t even know what a dance was, they only ever heard of banquets and boy did Lance hate those so when he saw the poster announcing the dance in the hallway he happily bounced towards Josh as he spotted him at the end of the hallway, by his locker.

“Hey” Lance greeted happily as he stopped to a halt in front of Josh.

Josh half smiled, “Hey” He eyed his friend; the bright smile on his face and the twinkle in his eyes and he couldn’t help but wonder what had gotten him so excited.

“Why are you so happy?”

“School dance” Lance responded, the smile growing but Josh’s smile slowly slid off his face.

“Oh” he said before turning back to his locker. Lance frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing” Josh dismissed. Lance’s frown deepened but he didn’t ask.

“So you going?”

“What?” Josh asked a little confused, not entirely knowing what Lance was talking about.

“The school dance, next Friday, you going?” Lance elaborated a little.

“No” Josh said immediately, he’d never been to a school dance.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Lance asked.

“Why would I?” Josh countered, he had a few reasons not to go; one, he didn’t have a costume and Henry sure wasn’t buying him one, two, no one wanted to go with him, hell they didn’t even wanted to be seen with him, three, they would all stare at him once he got there, keeping an eye on him just in case he was planning on stealing their wallets. It never occurred to them that he might be there for the same reason they were there; to have a good time, dance a little, just to forget reality. However forgetting reality when the people there all stared at him as if he were a murderer wasn’t helping him to forget, it was helping him to remember.

So yes he could have answered Lance’s question, why not go, easily but he didn’t, he didn’t want to tell Lance about all those reasons, it just hurt and he was ashamed.

“Why would you? Because it will be fun”

“I can’t” Josh told him, seeing Lance wasn’t going to let it go this easily, he hoped this would get him to back off because he was not going to that party, he couldn’t and he wouldn’t.

“Why not?” Lance asked intrigued suddenly, this was a different answer.

“Because I just can’t ok?” Josh told him a little fiercer.

“But…” Lance started.

“Just drop it… please” Josh pleaded, he didn’t want to go into this, didn’t want to fight about it, didn’t even want to think about it. It was no use.

Lance saw Josh’s eyes begging him to drop this, he smiled reassuringly, “Ok”

They were both silent for a little while.

“You want to come over next Friday to my house? We’ll have our own party” Lance offered to make up for pushing him, setting his own needs aside to make Josh feel better. He’d wanted to go to that party with Josh but Josh’s eyes persuaded him to drop it. Those eyes spoke volume and he trusted those eyes so he dropped it. Josh smiled gratefully.

“Sure” he said. Lance wouldn’t expect a costume, he wouldn’t look down on him, wouldn’t look at him with suspicion and he didn’t mind to be seen with him.

As Josh thought about the dance it was just another thing he had to miss because he had Henry as his stepfather. Although Lance and Josh had a good time hanging out at his house it was not the same and Josh wished he didn’t have those clear reasons not to go. It went on the already long list of things that were not meant for him just because of Henry. He basically had no normal teenage life because of the man and he wished he could leave him. There were just two small problems; 1) he was underage and 2) he had no place to go. He often wondered what his life would have been like if his mother hadn’t died. Would they still be living with Henry? Maybe. Maybe not. The sad thing was that he would never find out. He just knew it could not have been worse then this. Maybe if she were still alive Henry wouldn’t have sunk this low. Then he wouldn’t have taken Josh with him, he wouldn’t have forced him to steal for him. His mother would have never let that happen. She was always there trying to get Henry to quit stealing and he had. But it didn’t last long and now he even had an assistant; Josh.

Henry and Josh’s mother had been married so there was no question that Josh would stay with Henry, that was if Henry wanted it because if he didn’t then he could always hand him over to foster care. But Henry by then had other plans and needed Josh. Josh however didn’t know about those plans and there were no options for him if he didn’t want to live with Henry. Or maybe there had been but Henry had never told him about those, too eager to have a lackey, someone who would do all the work and would always get blamed.

It was perfect but for Josh it was a living hell.