Stargazing With Beilah

Running

Paying off debts and students loans was a difficult feat in and of itself. College and university were both incredibly expensive things. For the majority of people, getting into one of the two meant struggling for years to pay it off unless they had the luxury of incredibly wealthy parents. The cost of classes alone was insane, but adding in the price of room and board, books, and other such resources they would need for their classes as well as any expenses they needed for regular life and taking care of themselves, it was absolutely ridiculous. If you weren't able to score yourself an amazing job that made lots of money fairly quickly, it could take years to pay off debts and student loans from school. 

Unfortunately for Nina and Silver, they weren't exempt from the concept of debt or struggling through it, and there wasn't much money that came from comic books and novels. As the saying goes, art doesn't pay, and the two friends learned early into their career that that was absolutely true. 

There were certainly people who wanted to buy their products and they were good enough at their chosen profession to do fairly decent, but, no matter what they did, it wasn't enough. They could only raise their prices so high before people would stop coming in altogether and expanding what they had to sell by creating or purchasing more products lead to them losing nearly as much money as they made in doing so. It was a complicated and painful cycle for the two of them and they knew that they would have to each pick up other jobs to keep the shop up and running. That brought difficulties of its own, though. To pick up extra jobs, they would have to either hire more people to work at the shop when they were gone (meaning they would lose even more money), or they would have to work during their off time from work (leading to even less time for sleep). It was difficult for them to deal with. 

As time passed, Nina and Silver were running themselves ragged with the effort of keeping their lives together. Even with the help of Nina's long-time boyfriend, Takoda, they could barely handle working at the shop without hiring other employees and they hardly had the funds to pay them a decent amount of money.

To say that things were difficult was an understatement. They were running out of options.

In an attempt to do something- anything- to save their business, they tried to take on other jobs as well to help themselves along. 

Nina waited tables and Silver stripped. As they discovered fairly early on, though, neither of those was worth it. Being a waitress gave Nina strange hours that made it difficult for her to even do the basic things that she needed to do at their actual shop. Besides that, she didn't exactly make a great amount of money. Almost everything that she got was from her tips and even that wasn't enough. Silver did get paid quite a bit more, but working a strip-club, no matter how safe, felt sketchy and intimidating to him. Shockingly, horrible self-esteem, very little sex-appeal, and stripping didn't make for a fantastic combination and the awful cocktail lead to Silver constantly feeling terrified and uncomfortable at work and unable to make as much as his coworkers due to his inexperience and anxieties. 

Beyond that, neither of them were treated very well at their new jobs. Nina's boss was an absolute prick who demanded more from his employees than they could reasonably give and had the temper of a toddler. While Silver's boss was shockingly less sleazy and revolting, people began to recognize him by his work and harass him on the streets on his off days. It was exhausting to the two of them.

No matter what they did and how much effort they put forth, they just couldn't seem to escape their debts. 

That's why, after several years of struggling for enough money to keep their business open and keep themselves alive in the most basic of ways, they decided they would have to take a different route of escape- a more literal route of escape. 

Fleeing to another country wasn't the wisest of choices and both of them knew that, but, regardless, they felt as though they had been backed into a corner. They didn't have many other options.

Canada was the "safer" option. It would be easier to sneak to Canada without raising too much suspicion, but it was still far too close for their liking and they still had the small issue of their identities following them into their new lives. 

This whole "fleeing the country" thing was beginning to seem far more difficult than it had initially and the only one who was completely on-board with it was Nina. Regardless, Silver and Takoda followed along with the idea, despite how absolutely insane it seemed. 

Making plans to flee to another country was far from easy and, considering none of them had come from a life of crime, they didn't have a clue what they were doing. Everything that they suspected they needed to do was second-hand information or tips they found online or in books that they acquired in the most stealthy ways possible. While it took a great deal of time and struggling, they managed to form a half-decent plan that they all prayed would work.

There were other things that they had to attend to if they wanted to get away with this- they would have to change their names, among other things.

Takoda's was the easiest to change. The name "Dakota" meant the same thing as his birth name, had similar origins, and was just an anagram of his birth name. Plus, it was a far more common name (and most people misheard his birth name as Dakota regardless, so it worked perfectly). 

Silver wanted a name with the same meaning as his birth name and one that was just as powerful and strange as the one he was given by his parents. Hence him choosing the name Sterling. It meant "silver" or "star" and made him feel more like he was going on a high-fantasy adventure rather than running from the government and committing a felony. 

Nina, on the other hand, had a more difficult time deciding upon a name. Nina meant a lot of things, but perhaps the most stupid and irritating meaning behind the name was the number nine. How exactly was she supposed to get a name from that? And why was it that she had been stuck with such a boring and basic name as Nina? There were a few names she liked that had similar meanings, as she soon discovered, though. Unsurprisingly, there were few names she found that meant "nine" (not that she disliked that). There were, however, several names that meant other numbers and, as stupid as it was, there was one that stood out to her and that she absolutely loved: "Octavia". 

With their new names, a half-baked escape plan, and all of their things packed, the three friends were ready to start their new lives- or, at least, as ready as they would ever be.

Grammarly is an absolute fucking WHORE on Wattpad, so it didn't catch any of my mistakes and I refuse to go back and fix them. <3