I am putting a small warning on this story. I just want to let you readers know that this story deals with a sensitive topic.

Candace looked at the paycheck in her hands and sighed. She had worked hard for it, but she couldn't enjoy her largest paycheck ever. She took the long way home, as always, and before she knew it she was pulling into the driveway of the raised Ranch-styled house she lived in with her parents and her two siblings. See her mom walked out of the house claiming to have to go buy cigarettes...but that was thirteen years ago. Now, at fifteen, Candace had been working for so long she couldn't even remember when it all started. She also had her driver's license. Her father farmed some of the land surrounding their house and got her a farmer's driver's license. She didn't use it at all for farming purposes but with her driving it was another vehicle in the household. It was also another vehicle that enabled her stepmother to control her life.

Candace's dad had married his second wife, Marianna, shortly after his first wife left. Candace often wondered if there was even a gap between her mother leaving and her father getting engaged to the woman ten years his junior. She also wondered if maybe this woman was one of the reasons why her mother left. She wouldn't acknowledge that she was the sole reason why her mother left, no matter how much her father and stepmother told her she was. She looked at the nicely maintained outside of the house knowing the inside could never look as nice, no matter how much she cleaned.

She sighed when the door opened and her 11 year-old half-sister and eight year-old half-brother ran out of the house waving at her. She followed them in and bit her lip, smiling sadly because she knew that all the toys and dishes needed to be picked up tonight before she even attempted to do her homework.

"Candy, that you dear?"

Candace's body tensed at the voice that called her. She could tell that her step-mother had already given her father a few beers that would make him a barely breathing mass in front of the television for the rest of the night. This was a nightly routine. Her father would come home from work and Marianna would greet him with a cold beer and lead him to the couch where he'd be planted all night. On special occasions he left the chair to eat dinner with Candace and her siblings. While he was on the couch he left Marianna to tend to the rest of the house and tend to it she did. She made sure that Candace knew what to do and by when it needed to be done by.

"Yes, dad, it's me. How was work?" She bent to give her father a kiss on his cheek.

"It was all right. I showed up, I worked, I came home. Just like I do everyday. How was your day?"

Yeah, like you care. You know it's payday and want to know how much my paycheck is, Candace thought to herself, but actually said. "Same. Go to school, work, come home."

"That's nice," her father told her while looking at the tabloid story a television program was telling him. "Isn't that the group you like, Candace? And there's that one guy. What's his name?"

"The group's name is *N SYNC."

"I believe your father also asked about the guy you want to marry," Candace's step-mother cooed. "What's his name?"

"His name is Lance and I don't want to marry him." Candace grabbed her book bag and ran to her room to get away from the laughter of her stepmother. She looked up at a poster on her wall and sighed.

She couldn't believe how much her father had changed over the past couple of years. He used to be an actual father to her instead of this blob that allowed his wife to control everything and treat his daughter as she treated her, poorly. She understood that he didn't like his job and her stepmother pestered him because she didn't like their social class but he had no right to treat her like this.

Candace started to roam her walls, stopping and touching random pictures as she focused on them.

"Oh, Lance, what am I to do?" she asked one of the guys in the picute in front of her. "I don't know how much more of this I can take." She pulled out a few magazines and flipped them open to her favorite pictures. The only way she could escape the mass hysteria called her life was to look at these pictures and dream a dream of her white knight rescuing her from the torture and take her on tour with him.

But Candace knew Lance was never really coming. He would never ever know about her. Candace who? That's what he would say if asked about her. Even with that knowledge she wouldn't stop dreaming. It was better then thinking about how her life will really turn out. So looking into the green eyes of the man in the photographs she started to drown in her own fantasy world.

"Oh, Candace, I'm so glad you could come on tour with us. I couldn't think of you spending another moment in that house, with that woman." Lance squeezed Candace's hand as she leaned against him.

"I really am grateful to you, and the guys, for letting me come with you guys. I don't know why you did it, but thanks."

"You don't know why we did it?" Lance raised his eyebrows.

"Well we did it out of fear for our lives."

The couple looked up to see Joey in the doorway that lead from the backroom they were in to the rest of the bus.

"Fear for your lives?" Candace asked puzzled.

"Yeah, you see since Lance met you last week-"

"Joey, don't you have something better to do?" Lance interrupted his friend.

"Oh, yeah, I do. Let me just shut this door and leave you two alone." Joey nodded his good-bye and closed the door behind him.

"Lance," Candace turned toward him, "what was Joey talking about?"

"Umm..." Lance looked down nervously before meeting her eyes. "You see something has happened since we've met that prompted me to get the guys to agree to you coming on tour with us."

"You mean they didn't want me to come? I don't want to be where I'm not welcome. I could have just stayed home for-"

"Candace, just stop there. The guys love you almost as much as I do. I think that would be impossible to love you more than I do though."

Lance's words stopped her mouth. Did he just say he loved her? Nah, he must have meant that he loves her in an older brother way, not the way she hoped. She sighed and leaned her head back.

"As long as I'm welcome, but still you didn't have to invite me to tour with you and get a tutor for me."

Lance shook his head. "Aren't you listening to anything I've said? I asked you to come along to, one, get you out of that house, and, two, because I love you. I can't imagine anyone staying there, much less the girl I love. Now do you see?"

"So you love me?"

"Yes, and not just like some brother either." Lance took her hand and squeezed it.

"But I'm so much younger than you. It's illegal." She tried to pull away but he wouldn't let her.

"It's six years. I'll wait the three years until you turn eighteen as long as you're in my life and know that I love you. We'll make it work."

"But why me?"

"Why not?"

"Because-"

Her words were cut off by his finger on her mouth. She looked into his eyes and found comfort in the warmth his green eyes shot into hers. His finger slid to her cheek and he leaned toward her.

"Now I know sex is illegal but I know I'll just die if I can't at least have a taste of your lips."

Candace sighed as she closed her eyes and their mouths touched. She was in heav-

"Candace? Why haven't you started dinner yet?"

Candace shook her head as her step-mother's voice awoke her from her daydream. This always happened. She'd get to the good part of a dream and she'd be disturbed. She stretched her arms and was about to close the magazines when her bedroom door slammed open and her stepmother barreled in, none to pleased.

"Is this what you've been doing in here? Looking at these pictures of Lance? You silly girl. He'd never want anyone like you. Plus, he's way too old for you."

Candace sighed, taking her step-mother's words in one ear and out the other. She was used to not listening to the exact words because they were always the same. She was never good enough. No matter what they were talking about that was the message. She was good enough for no one, especially someone with actual status in the world. Candace sighed again and this time when she reached for the magazines two hands picked them up and threw them across the room.

"You're wasting your time with your silly dreams, girl, because that's all they are. Dreams. He's never even going to meet you. I told your father that letting you buy these was a waste of money. They're letting you think that you can ever leave this class that you're in. Well guess what, honey, you're not."

Candace took a deep breath and looked Marianna straight in the eye. "Just because you don't like where you are doesn't mean I have to be that way. Sure, I might never meet Lance or any of the other guys but I'll make damn sure I'm going to go somewhere and I'll throw it back in your face."

"Why you little bitch." Marianna picked up the magazines and began tearing them apart. She tore out a picture of Chris and held it up. "Oh boo-hoo, this *N SYNC member can now say I'm tearing up their heart."

Candace winced as the picture was torn slowly. Her jaw dropped but she closed it again when her stepmother dropped the magazine and clenched her fists. Marianna had never hit her before, but that didn’t comfort Candace. The woman had a temper and Candace always ended up on the wrong side of it. She also felt the sudden need to push her stepmother to her limits.

"Go ahead. Rip up my pictures. There's more where those came from. I just won't keep any more magazines here for you to touch, because, unlike you, I have friends. Have you ever even had a friend?" Candace swore under her breath. She had never talked back before and now the rush of it had worn off. Now reality was settling and and she knew there would be some way to pay for her words. She knew that she would be getting even less sleep over the next couple of weeks because that's what her punishment always was, more chores.

Candace held her cheek as a hand slapped it and then hit her other one. She put her arms up to defend herself, but the force of the blows was too much. All of her defenses were failing her due to frailty. After the assault stopped she looked up to find her stepmother smiling.

"That was fun. I should do that more often. Now where was I?" She paused and pretended to ponder. "Oh yeah." She grabbed one of the posters on the wall and ripped it off the wall. Bit by bit she tore the poster in pieces and threw them on the floor by Candace's feet.

Candace recovered from her shock and cried for Marianna to stop. She ran around the room trying to take the posters before Marianna got to them. She salvaged a few but dropped them when Marianna reached the last one on the wall, her favorite. It was her favorite because Lance was wearing a green shirt and his eyes were bright against the contrast of the shirt.

"Come here, Candace." her stepmother beckoned. When she shook her head Marianna called again. "Don't you say no to me, you whore. Now come here and stand in front of this picture."

Candace dropped her head and moved to stand in front of the poster.

"Now stand here. In front of your future husband." Marianna grabbed her arm and forced her face in front of Lance's. "Now that you're in front of him why don't you kiss him?"

Candace looked out of the corner of her eyes to see if Marianna was serious. The serious look on the woman's face and the tightening of the fist in her hair told the seriousness of Marianna's request. She bit her lip before quickly kissing Lance's face on the poster.

"You call that a kiss? Haven't you ever kissed someone before? Oh, that's right, you probably haven't. Now kiss him again."

Candace leaned in again and this time her face was pressed to the wall. Marianna teased her about her style of kissing before releasing her.

"See. Now you got to kiss him good-bye because this picture is the next to go."

No!" Candace cried as she put her hand over Lance, trying to save as much of the poster as she could.

"Oh, just had to save you're precious Lance now, didn't you? Now that you've kissed him. But I am disappointed that there was no tongue. He is the man you fantasize about daily."

Candace's knees gave was when they received a sharp blow. Next thing she knew her forehead was going into the wall. She looked up and focused on Lance's eyes.