I attempted to defuse the tension by praising each of them on their journal entries. Tabitha had gotten a perfect score, like usual; Taylor had actually managed an A herself, though that was only because I'd had her re-write them during our after school sessions when her pre-Serenex effort had yielded two off-topic paragraphs and ended with "this is stupid and I don't care." Her re-try had been better, and if it was objectively unfair that their scores were a mere three points apart, Tabitha was used to it by now. My praise did less than nothing to mollify either of them, and the three of us climbed into my...