We gathered around the breakfast table in the house three times a week for a two-hour tutoring lesson on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They listened to me about 45 percent of the time. Most of the sessions consisted of them rolling their eyes, and making the usual snide comments. I found out a few things about them, though. Blake liked English, but he didn’t want his brother to know. In fact, I suspected he got bad grades on tests just to please his twin, who had a hard time reading above the fifth grade level. Bruce did better in Science and Math. They didn’t like each other all the time, either. In fact, they hated the endless comparisons to each other almost as much as they hated the fact that my mother had married their father, and ended any hope of reconciliation for their parents. The best part of all, though, was how much my intelligence threatened them. They hated that. Once I found that out, I used it to my advantage in any way I could. Like today. “So,” I said, as the two of them struggled to write down a readable synopsis of The Great Gatsby.
