He rapped the brass knocker, and waited. He was standing on the doorstep to a rather large, old-looking house.
As he waited he surveyed the street. It was bland and uninteresting, row after row of houses and cars.
The door behind him opened, “Hi,”
He whirled around, “Hi, uh, Lauren isn't it?” he shook her hand,
She was shorter than him, though obviously a few months older, “Yeah, Adam right?”
“That's me, so this is it huh?” Adam asked, peering into the house,
“Yeah, um... if you head upstairs, third door on your right is your room, put whatever stuff you have there. You'll be next to my brother, James, the 'responsible' one,” Lauren moved to let Adam in,
Adam nodded and thundered up the stairs.
Lauren watched him go when another girl joined her near the door, “You know we're not gonna be able to keep it up for long, he'll find out,”
“I don't think so, he seems nice, and he's kind of good-looking too, it'd be a shame to get rid of him,” Lauren replied,
Adam reappeared at the top of the stairs, “Uh yeah, where's the bathroom? Forgot to ask,” he grinned guiltily,
“Second door on the left,” Lauren replied,
“Thanks!” he disappeared again, heading to the bathroom,
“He also seems to be a bit simple, I think we can hide it, we hide it from James well enough, and when we don't it's not hard to make him forget,” Lauren told the other girl,
“Ah, I needed that, ah, hello, who are you?” Adam asked as he came back down the stairs,
The girl scowled at him before returning to the living room.
Adam grimaced, then looked at Lauren, “What'd I do?”
“Ah, that's Evelyn, she's not so bad once you get to know her, she's just in one of her moods,” Lauren said cheerfully, brushing some of her black hair out of her eyes,
“Right, are those a frequent occurrence?”
“They can be,”
“Then I shall learn so stay out of her way,” he said cheerfully, then his stomach rumbled, “I think I want to know what's for dinner,” he grinned,
“On the way, I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I've got a bunch of stuff ready to be cooked up,”
“Oh, don't worry about that, just pasta and chicken will be enough for me. I'm incredibly picky, so something I'm familiar with will be fine,”
The sound of a car pulling up outside of the house could be heard, before it blasted its horn so loud it scared a cat rummaging through a bin so much that by the time it regained it's composure it had a banana skin for a hat.
“Ah, that'll be my stuff,” Adam said, opening the door and rushing out to the car,
“Great, I'll help,” Lauren followed him,

By the time they had got Adam's boxes up to his room both of them were exhausted,
“Argh, who knew I had such heavy stuff?” Adam groaned, as he sank onto the battered sofa situated in the middle of his room,
Lauren nodded in agreement, sitting down next to him,
“So, tell me about this school, what's with the living in accommodation outside the school nonsense?” he asked,
“The school wants us to learn what it's like to have places of our own for when we finally go out into the world. Of course, they provide the place and shove a bunch of us in together, to make us work as teams and family units, so it really doesn't work as it's more than likely the overachieving kids provide the money and stuff while the lazy kids who just get by do very little and leech off the overachievers.” Lauren replied,
“Glad I fall into the middle ground there then,” Adam said, “So, what about this place, any weird stuff I should know about?”
“Nah, nothing much happens at all really,”
“Just another sleepy little neighbourhood huh?”
“Yeah, just another sleepy little neighbourhood,”

Adam was lying on the old bed in his room, full from his meal and tired of putting up with Evelyn's glares.
James hadn't joined them for dinner, so Adam had had to sit in awkward silence with the two girls.
It must have been past midnight before noises from downstairs could be heard. Adam, who usually couldn't get into deep sleep until the earlier hours of the morning, was woken by it.
It wasn't distinguishable sound, just muted talking, Adam decided to investigate.
He opened his door carefully, wincing as it creaked. Once it was open enough for him to slip through without creating any more noise, he did so.
James's door was wide open, apparently he'd heard the same thing Adam had. Adam reached the landing where he saw James, who was a tall, but scrawny eighteen year old, peering into the living room, where weird, multicoloured lights were flashing. The talking was still indistinguishable, though now recognisable as a language other than English, and appeared to be spoken in harsh whispers and clicking from the back of the throat.
Deciding that calling to James would be a bad idea, Adam walked down the stairs slowly.
Before he could get to him though, James walked into the room, where he was met by a shriek.
“What are you-?” was all he said before he screamed,
Adam rushed down, and peered around into the room. Lauren and Evelyn were standing over a girl, and the girl was wearing-
I'm outta here, Adam thought, running towards the door, yanking it open and running onto the street.
Lauren was quicker, she fired a beam of energy, seemingly from her finger, at Adam's back as he ran. As it made contact he was bowled head over heels.
He hit the ground on his back. By the time he'd picked himself, both Lauren and Evelyn had caught up with him,
“You didn't change,” Evelyn commented, surprised,
“What?” Adam wheezed, clutching his chest,
“You were supposed to turn into a girl, you didn't,” Lauren said, looking at the ground,
“Well that'll be my hyper-advanced immune system, all I needed was the jolt to activate it and oh my God did I just say that?” Adam's eyes were wide,
“Yeah, what do you mean hyper-advanced?”
“Easy, few months back I was writing a book and I thought it'd be fun to write a couple of characters a short adventure where they find themselves in the real world. Regardless, for some reason that actually happened, and I came into contact with the character who is a representation of myself. I gained a few of his abilities but you woke up the rest of them, like the advanced immune system, the armoured rib cage and the second heart.” Adam said, looking bewildered after he said it, “And, apparently, the hyper-intelligence that comes with it,” he tried to take a step back towards the house and stumbled before Lauren caught him, “Don't you have a brother who is right now dealing with the weirdest case of identity crisis ever?”
“Yeah, guess I do,” Lauren said, her previously buoyant personality greatly subdued by the rapid and strange events that had just occurred, “Sorry about trying to turn you into a girl, I'm a trainee witch, and being interrupted by my brother and then you was a shock while I was in the middle of practising,”
“No problem,” he turned towards Evelyn, “what about you?”
“I'm a djinn,” she said shortly before power-walking towards the house,
“Fair enough,”