Devil's Eye

Chapter 21

5' 8"-5' 9"

Noah persuaded himself that Ethan didn't mean anything special, using the term 'specific'. Thomson was probably just whipping up tension, trying to reinsure himself and probe Noah's reaction. Recently, Thomson hardly got enough understanding from society. Actually, it was the opposite. He already got used to living against everything. Against the opinion of others, against social norms, and against lots of things that make society look like one. That's why Noah wasn't surprised to find out that Ethan was trying to hide his every hobby from everyone almost instinctively. Thomson's will to open his little secret to Noah emphasized brightly his unique favorability towards Morgan. It made him happy. However, Thomson couldn't trust Noah completely yet. That was why he decided to warn Morgan about his possible ambiguous reaction. It was a test, wasn't it? If it was, then Noah was going to pass it with the best grade, no matter what it could take.

The feeling of a gun lying in your hand and the recoil from every shot still made his palms burn. It was an unusual feeling. Noah always tried to stay away from the firing arms, thinking of it only from the perspective of direct danger for human life. The shooting range proved that sometimes humans could be not just victims in the formula, and that was when firing arms could create a different impression. Force and power. Nice tension in the wrists. And the feeling of self-satisfaction after making the bull's eye. It was sort of therapy when everything else wasn't so important anymore. The gun, the target, the result-it was all your attention needed to be concentrated on while shooting.

After they had shot all the bullets, Ranbir let Noah take the target home. For memories. Now it was lying rolled up in the back seat of Ethan's car. For Morgan, it was valuable not only because it kept the proof of his either inherent accuracy of aim or luck, but also because there were Ethan's accurate bullet marks around Noah's chaotic ones. It wasn't a picture of them together, but it was already something. The only thing he had left to do was decide where to hang it, since there was no empty space on the walls of Morgan's flat. Apparently, he had to take off one of his grandmother's paintings. Would it be okay to do so?

After some moral bargaining, Noah finally let himself do so. The past shouldn't hold on to the future. Besides, Noah wouldn't lose his respect for his grandmother's art if he took another painting down and put it in the corner of the room near the radiator.

Morgan was aware that Ethan was from a wealthy family but still couldn't handle a gasp of surprise when Thomson's car pulled into the closed driveway.

"What a house!" he exclaimed, leaning forward to see the mansion more closely. Considering that Morgan was thinking about where to find a place in his tiny flat to hang the piece of paper during their thirty-minute drive, Ethan would probably never have such a problem in his house.

The car drove silently across the rubble driveway straight to the garage. Automatic doors opened in front of them, making Noah grasp for the second time. The garage turned out to have the same characteristics as Tardis, Doctor Who's spaceship (Noah loved 'Doctor Who'): it looked smaller from the outside than it was on the inside. The garage looked nothing like those Noah had been in before. In school, Noah and Nicolas used to hang out in his father's garage. They would assemble models of planes, or, if there were more kids wanting to hang out (though, most of the time, they were happy just being alone together), they would play Dungeons and Dragons. It was a pity that life split them apart around the country. It was a pity that they grew up and could never play D&D anymore, at least because the game would probably seem boring right now. However, Noah wouldn't mind throwing a dice right now and hearing from the host what he had to do next, since he didn't know the answer himself. Nicolas' stories were always rather savage. That's why they were so interesting. The game could last twelve hours straight. Though if anyone wanted to interrupt them-for example, Nicolas' mom, who would call them to have dinner, or Nicole, asking them to leave the garage so that she could work on her project-Nicolas would get extremely angry and tell everyone they could go to hell. Good old times.