The next meeting was held at Oliver's house. While all the adults enjoyed themselves with wine and beer, and Esther cooed over photos Marcassin had brought of his younger self and his – handsome – missing brother, Oliver sat beside the fish tank and watched the fish swim.

So far, they only had five fish: A giant tropical sunfish named Drippy with a funny yellow marking on its nose; a clownfish named Mitey; an odd orange catfish named Tom; an algae eater named Cowlipha Lowlah (Alicia was the one who'd come up with that name); and an angelfish donated by Esther that she'd named Gogo.

"Mr. Drippy, how am I supposed to find Lucien by my mom's birthday?" he murmured. He put his elbow on the side table and watched Drippy swim about. Sometimes, he felt like Drippy was trying to talk to him – but of course, that was ridiculous. Drippy was only a fish.

Suddenly, Drippy begin to swim frantically to the surface, mightily thrashing about. Startled, Oliver opened the lid of the fish tank.

Drippy jumped out of the water with so much force that he landed on the phone book on the ground next to the table.

Oliver quickly knelt down and picked Drippy up with cupped hands. Drippy immediately began thrashing about, falling on the phone book – again. Oliver tried again, but again, Drippy fell out. Frustrated, Oliver grabbed Drippy in his shirt and dumped him back in the tank, half-removing his shirt in the process; as he pulled his shirt back down, Drippy jumped out and landed on the phone book. Again.

"Why the phone book?" Oliver cried as he tried, one final time, to put Drippy back in the aquarium. "Why not the table? You're just making this harder for me, Mr. Drippy!"

The fish thrashed about on the phone book, smacking its tail against it several times. Coincidentally, the place he smacked with his tail was the line that read, "listings, names, addresses and phone numbers – all conveniently stored in one book!"

One word caught Oliver's eye.

Names.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Drippy," he breathed. He quickly picked the fish up and put it back in the tank. This time, it swam lazily as Oliver closed the lid. Whatever message it had wanted to send was sent.

Oliver picked up the phone book and began flipping through the pages. The cover was a big damp, thanks to Drippy, but otherwise, it was in perfect condition.

It was in perfect condition to help him find his father.

(*.*)

"Hey, Esther! Look what I found!"

Esther stared at the object that he shoved into her hands, exhausted from the sprint down his driveway.

"Oliver, this is a phone book."

He nodded. "We can use it to find Lucien!"

She gave him a funny look. "Huh? What? How?"

Oliver grabbed the book from her and began to flip through the pages furiously. "See? There're names listed here. I bet Swaine knows Lucien's last name. If he knows his last name, then finding him will be easy-peasy!"

Esther stared at it a while longer. Finally, it all began to sink it.

"You mean…you want to find everyone with Lucien's last name and visit their house to find out if they're really Lucien or not?"

He nodded again. That was all the confirmation she needed.

"That'll take a lot of walking, you know."

Judging from the excitement on Oliver's face, he didn't really care.

(^o^)

"Wait." Swaine tapped his chin in deep thought. "You're telling me that you want to use a phone book to find your missing dad?"

Oliver beamed. "Yep! Swaine, you know my dad's last name, right? We can get started right away!"

"You know, there are a few problems with that plan," Swaine continued, ignoring Oliver.

"That's what I told him, but he didn't listen!"

"First of all…" Swaine began to tick the points off on his fingers. "This phone book only covers our region. What if he lives further away?"

"Then we get a bigger phone book!"

Clearly, Oliver was determined to find his father using this technique, no matter what complications were imposed.

"Second of all, what if he's listed under a different name? Say, he's married someone else, or he's a tenant in someone else's home?"

Oliver didn't say anything to contradict that point.

"Third of all, how are we going to get to these houses? Some of them are a three-hour walk away – one way!"

"We'll take a bus," Oliver muttered. Esther could tell that he was beginning to lost heart in this idea – only a little, but even so, he was growing slightly less enthusiastic. "We'll pay with our own allowance. If we need an adult to accompany us, we'll get you to come."

Swaine shook his head and sighed. "Fourth of all… Lucien's last name is 'Johnson'."

That perked Oliver up again. "So? What's the big deal?"

Even if Oliver didn't understand, Esther did. She sighed, took the phone book from Oliver, and began to flip through the pages. "You'll understand when you see it."

He did.

The phone book was nine hundred pages long. Of those nine hundred pages, five hundred were devoted to residential phone numbers. The pages were size ten font, single-spaced, with two columns of names and numbers.

Of all those pages, forty-five were devoted to the last name "Johnson".

Oliver could feel his heart begin to sink. How on Earth were they going to finish this in nine months? They'd only be meeting once a week. That meant they'd only have about forty hours to look at all of these houses. And what if Lucien didn't live in any of them?

Esther watched him and patted him kindly on the back. "We could just ask my father," she suggested. "I'm sure he'll see our side of it eventually."

"No." Oliver looked up, determination bright in his eyes. "We're doing this without any help."

Esther smiled wearily. "All right. If you say so, I guess I can't complain."

Swaine sighed, shook his head, and face-palmed. "Why did I get caught up in this again?"

Oliver looked up at him. "Does that mean you're doing it with us?"

"Of course I am! Don't be mad!"

"All right, then." Oliver gulped. "I guess we should get started."

('o'):)

"Oliver, sweetie, are you all right? How's the club?"

Oliver lifted his head off the table. "It's good. I'm just tired… Grade two is so much harder than grade one…"

Alicia patted his head. "Don't forget – if you ever need help with your homework, I'm right here. Okay?"

"..Mmmkay…"

The winter holiday was less than a week away. For three weeks, he'd go on a cruise with his mother and the other Wise Men – to save money, they'd rented shared cabins.

That was three fewer weeks he had to search for his father.

Swaine had managed to create a list of all the locations in order of distance. He'd even conveniently put all the homes that were near each other in the same section of the list. So far, out of the approximately 6500 names in the list, they'd gone through about 140 names – and those were the ones that were closest to the park where they met. Swaine had offered to look up some of the further ones in his spare time, since he wasn't as busy as Esther or Oliver, but Esther had firmly refused to give him any money for bus or subway tokens – "remember how we met him? We met him when he was stealing things from a store! How do we know he won't just make off with the money and simply pretend he was going to those houses?" – so he'd been forced to go to the nearest ones possible. Every week, when he received his allowance, Oliver tucked it away in this wallet to save up for the bus and subway tokens they'd later need. Child fare wasn't cheap; adult fare, even less so. Although he and Esther had agreed to split their money to get Swaine's tokens, it was still going to eat up a lot of cash, and besides which, public transit wasn't very fast, either. They simply didn't have enough time.

The next morning, he met Esther with a very strange proposition.

"What I have on Wednesday afternoons? Hmm…" Esther tapped her chin and thought. "Well… It's mostly just math or language, although the teacher sometimes takes us outside for DPA."

Suddenly, she stopped walking. "Oliver… Surely, you can't be thinking…"

Oliver sighed. "I know, I know. I feel really bad about it, too, but… We don't have enough time, Esther! We're not going to be able to finish all those names by July, and I don't want to waste a whole year finding Lucien. We're going to have to skip school."

And that was that.

The next time they met up with Swaine, they told him to come a bit earlier than usual. He saw through it right away, of course.

"Oh, no." He backed away and shook his head. "You kids aren't skipping school for something like this. As boring as it may be – and believe me, I know how boring it can be – school is important for your future lives. You don't want to skip, fail, and then end up like me."

"It's only for this one year, though!" Oliver protested. "Just until I find my dad!"

Swaine shook his head again. "No way! You're not getting me into this!"

Esther put her hands on her hips and stomped her foot. "Why not? You voluntarily agreed to join this mission, you know! Are you backing out now because you're too scared to keep going?"

He glared at her and growled, "I am not a chicken!"

"Oh, really?" she taunted. "Because you sure seem like one now! You're not Swaine, you're swine – a scaredy-cat swine!"

In the end, Swaine agreed to help them forge notes to get out of class.

It turned out that he knew exactly what Rashaad and Alicia's writing looked like, and it only took him a few minutes and several sheets of paper to construct satisfactory notes.

Dear Mr/Mrs. _,

My son/daughter, Oliver/Esther, will be leaving school two periods early every Wednesday, starting from today. They have told me that they're willing to do extra homework to catch up with their classmates in order to be able to spend time with their ailing grandparents, who have been moved to a hospital an hour's drive away. I hope you will excuse their absence.

Sincerely,

Alicia/Rashaad

It was perfect. Both teachers lapped it up like puppies, expressing their dearest condolences for their grandparents – and yes, of course, I'd be happy to not call your parents every time! I understand that it'll force them through more pain and suffering when they come home and find these messages on their answering machines, reminding them of their beloved parents' suffering…

So from then on, they had an extra one and a half hours to search for Lucien. It wasn't much, but it would do.

RIP (X.-)

"Excuse me, but have you ever heard of someone named Alicia Sagess?"

"Ne'er heard of 'er," a gruff, slightly slurred voice answered from within. "Try another house."

Esther sighed as they walked away and crossed yet another name off the list. "Two hundred and ninety-three down, and only…" She did the mental math. "Around six thousand two hundred and seven to go."

"I'm tired," Oliver mumbled. His head was buried in a map, although he was clearly slouching and dragging his feet. This was taking more of a toll on him than they'd expected.

"Come on, you're the one who came up with this brilliant idea in the first place, Oliver!" Swaine snapped. "Hurry up!"

Esther glared at him and, very deliberately, stepped on his foot with her half-inch heel. He winced and clutched his foot in agony.

"What was that for?" he bellowed. She shot him another angry look.

"Don't be like that," she muttered, low enough that the exhausted Oliver couldn't hear. "He's more tired than any of us – I bet he's been staying up all night, worrying about what his father would be like, or if he'd ever be able to find him."

Swaine snapped back, in a voice just as low as hers, "It was still his bloody idea! If he's so tired, why doesn't he just call it off?"

"Why don't you just leave if you hate it so much? Hmm?"

Swaine fell silent. Esther mentally marked that off as a victory for her.

"See? If you can't do it, how do you expect him to do it, when the person we're looking for is his father?"

"Still," he grumbled, shuffling behind her. "Why didn't we just call all these people instead of visiting them?"

"People can lie more easily over the phone than face-to-face," she said primly, chin held high like a princess. Clearly, she'd done plenty of research in case this argument ever came up. "Besides, if we meet the real Lucien and he tries to lie to us, you'd know – after all, you know what he looks like, don't you?"

She spun around and glared at him, daring him to lie. He sighed.

"Yeah, I do."

She turned forward again. "See? What did I tell you?"

Oliver turned around and called, "Hey, are you guys coming? We've got another house just down this block."

Esther replied, "I'm coming!" and began to jog. Swaine sighed and wearily followed suit.

Who knew? he thought. Maybe they would find the guy, although goodness knew the chances of that were very bloody low.

(o.O)

Alicia beamed in the car as she drove to the school. Wouldn't Oliver and Esther be surprised! Today, she'd just gotten paid for an article she wrote about education and poverty, and it was a large enough paycheck that she could afford to treat them all to some ice cream sundaes.

Who knew? Maybe if she was in a good enough mood, she'd invite Rashaad, and Kublai, and Khulan, and maybe even Marcassin, if he had the time in between studying for his final exams. All high school exams were tough, but they were always even more stressful when you knew that they were the last high school exams you'd ever take. Marcassin had quite the sweet tooth; perhaps a sundae would help him relax.

She parked in front the school and waited patiently for Oliver and Esther to appear, backpacks on and ready for a treat. She was certain that they'd walk this way eventually – they had to; their house was just down the street from the school, so there was no way they'd take another route.

As she waited and more and more children began leaving the school grounds, though, she felt a sense of worry come over her. What was wrong? Were they in detention?

Then she smacked herself in the head. Of course! Today was Wednesday! Oliver had his nature club today!

Surely he could skip one meeting. Ice cream sundaes had to trump school clubs.

She got out of the car, making sure to lock it, and went into the office.

"Excuse me," she said to one of the secretaries, "but where is the nature club taking place?"

The secretary's fingers flew across the keyboard as she presumably searched up the nature club. After a few minutes, she looked up, slightly confused. "I'm sorry, ma'am-"

"Alicia."

"-Alicia, but there's no nature club."

The panic was beginning to grow. "Could you check again? Maybe it was the outdoor club, I'm not too sure."

The secretary shook her head. "I'm sorry, but there's no club related to nature that meets today."

Yes, something was definitely wrong. Before Alicia could break down into a complete panic attack, the secretary said, "You're Alicia Sagess, right? Your son is Oliver, grade two?"

"Yes." Alicia watched as the secretary rolled over to the filing cabinet and began to rifle through the papers.

"I thought so!" she exclaimed triumphantly, minutes later. "Here, Miss Alicia – your son's gone off to visit his…sick…grandparents."

The secretary frowned and her forehead furrowed as she chewed on a nail. "What? Miss Alicia, with all due respect, either the note is false or-"

"Give me that note," Alicia said, thrusting out her hand. The secretary mutely obliged – she knew better than to get between a woman and her child.

Alicia read the note over – once, twice, then three times, each time with the sense of urgency growing inside her. "Sick grandparents"? She didn't have grandparents – none of the Wise Men did! They were all foster siblings, raised by a single couple who'd died a few years back, before Oliver, Esther, Marcassin, or even Gascon was born. She ran back to the secretary.

"Excuse me, but do you have another note for a girl named Esther Anabab?"

It only took a matter of seconds for the secretary to locate another note, identical to the first, save for the names and handwriting, which distinctly resembled Rashaad's.

Alicia picked up the office phone and dialed a number. Let the school staff try to stop her.

She had a son and a niece to locate.

A/N: They do face-palm in the game. I'd use another word if I could – "face palm" sounds ugly, but "slapped themselves in the face" also sounds somewhat…odd. And not right. So "face-palm" it is. If the phrase disgusts you in writing, trust me, you're not the only one.

Also, for all you Americans, DPA is basically extra physical education in a non-gym class, so - for example - your homeroom teacher will just randomly take you outside sometimes to play sports. Basically.