Changing Courts

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Then she clicks a series of sharp and accurate staples to a skirt pattern, pumps her fist and yells, "Huh! Yeah!" Mission accomplished, Venus can turn to goofing on her classmates. Jerry Hernandez, 19, is running around the classroom looking for his grade sheet, which Venus pulls from her purse, giggling.

Come break time, Serena is persuaded by a classmate to go out to the vending-machine room, where tragedy strikes. "No! This is so not fair!" yells Serena as her Tostitos refuse to fall from slot A6. She is making quite a scene. "This is ridiculous. I've got to have those A6s. They're delicious." She settles, unhappily, on Fig Newtons, trail mix and a vastly inferior brand of chips.

On her way back to class, still vowing to get her dollar back, Serena runs into a classmate. "I hate to do this to you, but my kids have a poster of you in their room, and I was wondering if I could bring them in to meet you guys," the classmate says. "It would rock their world." Serena agrees to meet them the next week.

Toward the end of the four-hour class, the instructor is reviewing for next week's midterm, and Serena, without looking at her meticulous notes, is correctly giving most of the answers. When the teacher announces that the test will be multiple choice, Venus and Serena, showing they are worthy and true students, look at each other, pump their fists and yell, "Yes!"