“You screwed up.”

Thomas looked up from his notebook to find Shea shaking her head at him. Eli and Ian were right behind her, but they seemed distracted by something on the other side of the cafeteria.

“How do you mean?” Thomas mumbled as he closed his notebook. He had been trying to start on his family tree, but for some reason he had only been able to bring himself as far as writing his own name. Every time he tried to add his parents, he couldn’t decide which father to focus on.

Briar’s words kept echoing in his head. ‘Draw your tree to hide us?’ Now that she had placed the idea in his head, he couldn’t deny that part of him wanted to do just that.

Shea sat down beside him and turned to face him head on. “Briar’s in the class I’m TAing.” Thomas faintly remembered her mentioning this fact before. “I usually say hi and chat with her before the class starts, since I consider her a friend and all that.” She sighed and stared at Thomas seriously. “Today she pretended she didn’t know who you were when I said your name.

“I don’t know what you did, but she’s really mad at you.” Shea pointed across the cafeteria. “Go apologize for whatever it was.”

Thomas looked and saw Briar sitting at another table. He felt a pang of guilt when he saw that Logan was sitting with her. He got to his feet and started heading for their table.

Even if he didn’t understand what had made Briar so angry, Shea was right. He owed someone at that table an apology.

“Hey guys.” He said to them, accidentally interrupting Briar mid sentence. She glared at him before turning and pretending he wasn’t there.

“Thomas!” A voice greeted him happily. Thomas hadn’t even noticed that Briar and Logan weren’t the only people at the table. With a start, he recognized Lana, the girl from the GSA. She and Logan must have become friends.

Logan smiled at him, but he glanced at Briar. He must have known something was going on.

“Sit with us.” Lana instructed him, scooting over even though there was lots of room at the table.

“Uh, that’s okay.” Thomas’s attention darted to Briar, who was glaring at Lana now, before returning to Logan. “I just came over to apologize.”

That got Briar’s attention. She turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “Apologize?”

“Uh, yeah.” The back of Thomas’s neck felt tingly and he rubbed at it nervously. “For Friday.” He focused on Logan. “I had a lot on my mind, but I shouldn’t have ignored you in the hallway. I’m sorry for that.”

“Oh.” Logan started to laugh. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes you have to take the time to sort out your thoughts. Trust me, I know.” His gaze darted down for a moment, but then he returned his attention to Thomas. “It’s fine. Don’t let it bother you.”

“Uh, okay.” Now Thomas was confused. Briar had made it sound like Logan had been heartbroken by his actions on Friday.

“You can make up for it by joining us for lunch today.” Lana suggested, tugging Thomas into a chair. “Briar was just telling us about her math class this morning.”

Briar glared at Lana again. Then she looked at Logan, paused for a moment, and sighed. “It’s nothing really, my teacher’s just a little scatterbrained.” She went on to describe how he had accidentally drawn a rather vulgar picture on the board while explaining algebra.