Other people's houses

A child.
There's a big red van outside of school.
Outside, a familiar head runs (jeremy!). The child runs after. At the door of the van, a (big grinning teeth! it's blocking out the sun!) face swoops down.
-C'mon Nicholas, you as well. Remember you're coming to our house as well tonight?
Nicholas hops in. For a while, he is content, alongside Jeremy in the back. There is a Blinky Bill colouring book. Nicholas doesn't pick it up.
The familiar roads of his universe fly past him. He knows some of the facades by heart. Well the flashes of them. His sister is allowed to walk home. Then there is a strange turn.
(i've been been here in a car with dad)
-This is near the tennis courts.
Jeremy turns, with gleeful wide eyes. - I know! I live two minutes from the tennis courts!
But it take ten minutes to get there because Jeremy insitsts, loudly, that he and Nicholas be given KFC drive through. Having never visited before Nicholas orders a large fries and feels he hasn't done his parents too much harm.

At the house Nicholas is impressed by its solidness. He likes the way it sits wide in its block, with high triangle roofs, all covered in little peices of red, as tall as the trees around it.
Inside the smell is like a wave. Everyone else hurries into the kitchen but Nicholas is rooted in the hall.
Nicholas is freaked. (home isn't like this) He wouldn't call it a bad smell. It's just so very strange. There's a grease to it, like when his dad cooks stir-fry on holidays in a cabin. But this doesn't have the void, carbonated aroma of the many time's rented, many time's clean. This house's scent is alive, a steady pulse, the true backbone of the dark wooden floorboards, unpolished and dusty. It creeps in the curtins and hangs above the rug.

Nicholas feels instantly uncomfortable. He starts looking at the figures that are presented to him, two large men ones who wore shorts under big bellies, and had hariy arms and legs, who were loud and jocular with big tanned faces (one has hair on his face!)
They are ok. But Nicholas needs to be home now, to ask someone (anyone) where the smell could be coming from. Its electric!
The people move the most. One of the big men ruffles Jeremy's har and taps him on the arm. Then prods him a bit harder in the stomach. Jeremy pushes past him, scowling, to slump in the hall and begin playing with lurid toys that spill from his room. His mother sighs at the two of them and reguards the clock accusingly. The man stalks out, snatching his beer from the table. The other man leaves with him.
-When's my mum coming?
-Five O'Clock, Nicholas. Twenty minutes.
(that's lucky. it's like the jungle book. wolf boy sense of smell.)