Well, Mary starts off as someone who absolutely needs to have the best grades so that she can prove her worth and make herself different from her twin brother, who slacks off and doesn't care. There's this internal drive to prove herself to someone, anyone.

I relate to her in that sense. I'm not a twin, but I am a triplet, and that really affects your psyche. I'll always be after the top grades over my siblings so I can have something that separated me from them and makes me better in some sense. I know I'll always be compared to them throughout my life, so there will always be the search of something to make me notable beside the fact that my siblings were born minutes after me. Being the Smart One is what identifies me in the group, and when that is taken away I feel like I have nothing.