They do as they'd said the next day—Thomas talks with his teachers, then to all the teachers in the building, using the "my friend" excuse to explain what had happened without giving away his and Jack's carefully-kept secret. None of them know of a Lacey Aberwie.
He and Jack retrace his steps at every opportunity, Jack with one eye on the crowds and one on his arm.
They get nothing.
For the next week they try to spot her, walking the same path over and over at all hours of the day and night—they ask the staff of all the shops on the Burger King block if they know a Lacey, walking up and down the streets, and Jack takes to studying at McDonalds during Thomas's shift so they can test the waters without having to ask all the customers what their names are.
It becomes increasingly difficult to seek her out while simultaneously attempting to keep her out of conversation with friends and classmates, not wanting to draw attention to her importance to them before they even knew if she was really around, and when Jack's shift gets moved up a few hours, time constraints impede their quest as well.
They look up what the colors on Thomas's arm mean, finding a BPNQ website deep on the interwebs with a list of name colors translated into genders, but somehow the yellow and purple theme isn't listed. They come to the conclusion that whatever she is, Lacey probably isn't male or female, maybe something in between or outside the binary altogether—but they do find color schemes for about thirty other genders they hadn't even realized existed.
"Probably shoulda learned about all this years ago," Thomas remarks one night, reading over Jack's shoulder. "Bein' bi and all."
"I never really thought about it," Jack admits with a shrug, scrolling down a page about bigenderism. "I just figured soul mates were soul mates and the rest didn't matter."
Thomas smiles, soft and affectionate, and kisses Jack's nose.
"Sounds just like something you'd say," he says, and they keep learning.
A month passes, and they don't find her (if she is a her). Fifteen thousand students hadn't seemed like much on paper, but looking for a specific person amongst them feels like questing for a compass in a forest.
Time passes and they start to lose enthusiasm for the quest, slowly coming to terms with the idea that they won't be finding her for some time.
They fall back to their routine—law school, film school, shifts in town, making out when they should be writing essays, hanging with friends when they should be sleeping.
They pass their finals and celebrate by sleeping in the next morning, eating cold pizza from Jack's mini fridge and spending the rest of the day playing video games half-naked, drinking flat Mountain Dew and half-stale Doritos.
They go home over the summer to spend time with Damara and Bradford, who notice Thomas's new colors faster than Jack did—and the absence of the same colors on Jack's arm elicit apologies and sympathetic whines that Jack could do without.
They give advice that doesn't help—look her up online (they can't find a Lacey Aberwie anywhere), ask all their friends (they're still in the closet, and that's the last conversation they want to have right now), maybe the Dean knows her—and in general, make Thomas wish he'd never told Bradford about the second and third names in the first place.
But it's nice to see their guardians again, and Damara doesn't mind hosting them both as long as they help with the laundry and Bradford doesn't wear his work clothes in the house. Jack's discovered that he doesn't mind laundry—he kind of finds it relaxing—so he spends a lot of time helping Damara fold shirts and pants and socks in the basement while Thomas and Bradford shoot the shit in the family room.
It's one quiet afternoon like that--the familiar muffled shouts of the Grays leaking unintelligably in through the door at the top of the steps, late afternoon sunlight streaming through the above-ground slit of a window on the west wall, the smell of lilac detergent and strawberry fabric softener pervading the air--that Damara, contentedly watching him fold and sort, interrupts his rhythm by handing him a small wooden box. He furrows his brow and opens it slowly.
Inside, nestled in faux velvet, is a gold-banded ring topped with three small pink diamonds.
Jack looks up at his mother in open disbelief, so quickly that he hears his neck crack, and she smiles, cupping his open hand (absent one engagement ring) in hers and setting the other against his cheek. She runs her thumb along his cheekbone, her head cocked to the side as she studies his face.
"For when the time comes." He tries to articulate a response, but all that comes out is a small squawk. Pulled close by his mother, all Jack can do is hug her fiercely, kissing her cheeks in thanks.
"Just don't let him disappear before you're legally married."
"I don't know," he returns, trying not to cry, "I hear illegal marriage is really where it's at."
Jack doesn't tell Thomas about the ring--he tucks it away in his suitcase, where he knows it'll be safe, and the rest of the visit passes too quickly.
They head back to town and stay with their friend Alby until the school year starts—he has an apartment near the school that he doesn't use June through July, and his only request is that they pay the rent while he's gone and not leave fluids on the couch.
By summer's end, they've essentially forgotten about Lacey Aberwie—Thomas assumes she was never at the school to start with, but Jack is convinced that she graduated in the winter. Jack lets it go, confident that they'll find her.
We have to, he tells himself, it's fate—but he catches Thomas staring at his own wrist some nights, running his fingers along the colorful letters, and Jack is caught between sympathy and envy—it hurts him to see his lover in pain over something neither of them can change, but it also hurts to see him mooning over someone else while the best years of their lives surround them.
He can't understand the worry and fear and blame that Thomas is laying on himself until the first day of school, when Jack undresses for work and curses loudly because there, on his wrist, are colored letters dancing across the name Lacey Aberwie, who can't be found online and isn't in the student directory.
Of course it's Thomas who comes running, and his reaction is the same.
They stare at each other for a long, long time, and don't say a word.
Unlike in the law building, very few of Jack's courses are small and most of his professors couldn't tell Jack his own name, let alone that of another student, so after a week of searching and asking around they give up, hoping that she asks about them, and that her questions are more readily answered.
Thomas's nightly starefests cease to be a solitary affair, and they bond anew over the hope that Lacey won't be like Thomas's biological father, that she'll be more like them, eager beyond measure to discover what the world has in store for her.
"What if she stops looking?" Jack wonders aloud every so often (Thomas tells him it's every few hours but it feels like every six years). He knows worrying out loud is only going to freak Thomas out, but he can't help himself. "What if now that she can assume we've met she thinks the commitment is too much?"
"Then we pray we find her before she can reach the border," Thomas replies, and goes back to his books.
Jack takes up pacing and Thomas starts a blog.
In October, Alby spends a night in the dorms—his building's being fumigated and Jack and Thomas are only too happy to offer his air mattress a spot on their floor, because what are bros for? Also they didn't pay as much of the rent as they promised they would, so maybe this will get him off their backs.
Thomas is off studying for a test with Connie, a friend from his legal classes, and Jack is working on editing together some footage he shot for Professor Edwards—mostly of Thomas and Glenora pretending her dog is their son at an amusement park that doesn't allow pets. The footage is actually pretty solid, but the bits where they're running from security guards have to be cut out—they're suitable only for the internet, where Thomas has, in true characteristic fashion, already placed them. His blog is quite popular among Drixel students.
While Thomas is out, Alby takes command of his bed, drinking cheap beer from a wine bottle and watching Netflix on his iPad.
"So you ever tell that girl on 'Drixel Missed' to step off?"
It comes so far out of left blue that Jack thinks it was the iPad until Alby repeats himself, this time addressing Jack by name.
"What's 'Drixel Missed?'" Jack asks, turning in his seat. He doesn't even pretend to be annoyed at the distraction—his eyes hurt from staring at the screen and at this point he would accept an earthquake as a welcome leisure cruise from filmpain island.
"Drixel Missed Connections?" Alby glances at Jack, eyebrows quirked. "Dude. Everyone's using it, how are you not in the know?"
"I'm happily Wrist-Wed, thank you," Jack reminds, lifting his left hand with the other. "Probably no one thought to tell us because we'd have no use for it."
"Guess that makes sense." Alby belches into his elbow and goes on, headphones on the bed but eyes on the screen. "Some chick opened a thread about you and Thumb. You should check it and let her in on the good news. Hate to leave a lady with expectations, right?"
"Yeah," Jack says, and takes a tab, feigning indifference while his blood pulses erratically under his skin, flesh on fire and insides turned to ice. What if it's her? he wonders, What if she's still here?
"Drixel Missed" is a shoddy site obviously put together by amateurs, cobbled together with awful fonts, dropped links, and faulty code. To be fair, Jack couldn't do any better, but his mother would blush to know that someone with such an infantile grasp on HTML format had dared to show their work to the world, and through exposure he's inherited her standards.
Fortunately the forums work, and though the search box doesn't the CTRL+F function is a trusty friend—he types in Thomas's name and holds his breath.
There it is.
To Thomas Gray and Jack J. Jackson.
You: Two star-bound young men with neither eyes nor the sense to use them.
Me: Lacey Aberwie, a tall brunett with little more sense than thee.
Please respond posthaste.
It's simple and to the point—there are several replies, a few of which, unflattering and slur-coated as they are, obviously belong to Alby—but Jack doesn't respond right away. Instead he emails himself the link, picks up his phone, and quietly leaves the room. Alby doesn't even seem to notice.
Thomas and Connie are spread out across the floor of her dorm room when Jack enters. He says nothing, only grabs Thomas by the arm, takes him through the door, and shows him his phone.
Thomas's legs threaten to give out, but with shaky fingers he takes command of the situation. They schedule a meeting on Halloween.