Once again making sure the house was locked up and he had his spare key in his pocket, Mark set off down the sidewalk, not really knowing what his destination should be. He could try the fast food places--but for one thing that required him to deal with people on a daily basis, and for another thing it was the quintessential "loser" job for anyone who wasn't in high school, and even then. If he absolutely had to have a job to get his parents off his back, he might try it, but he would damn well exhaust every other option.

Graphic Design was certainly not panning out. In this economy people needed the essential services, not luxuries like art. Any company that needed a logo would just get one of their employees' nephews who was "a good drawer" or some shit to doodle up something they could work with for pennies off the buck. Newspapers and magazines would just throw together whatever layout they thought looked nice; who needed a degree to slap some pictures and text on a sheet of paper?

He'd had a free ride to college thanks to his scholarships, but damn it all if he didn't want a refund for that goddamned degree.

Anyway, he would have to try something outside his "field," even though it wasn't really like he had a place in it anyway. He could try one of those plazas with a bunch of little shops in it, maybe a cell phone provider or something. He knew where one of those was--it had a bookstore in it he had frequented a lot while he was in college. He decided to cut through the park and take a shortcut, enjoy the scenery. Who knew, maybe some girls would be jogging or walking their dogs or something and he could work on some of these other quests...

Yeah, like he had that in him. To just talk to some girl he didn't even know, much less outright lie to her just for the sake of supernatural power. 

As he stepped onto one of the pathways that meandered around the park, he slowed down so as not to run into a group of three teens who struck him as the troublesome types. He watched them for a moment, as they seemed to have a purpose to their steps. It looked like they were headed for some skinny kid sitting on the swings by himself, and from their expressions Mark figured something was about to go down.

[i]Oh boy, wonder what possible stereotypical situation could play out here. Time to steal some lunch money? No, it's not a school day. Maybe someone's baby-momma got herself a new man. No, you know what, let's be open minded. It could be a lover's quarrel, but now someone's leaked it off the down-low and they have to break it off to keep their homophobic families from disowning them.[/i]