Steve remembered meeting Mr. Craven on parent-teacher night. With his daughter having trouble in math class, Steve and the teacher had worked together to devise a study schedule that would help her improve her grades. Now he sat glumly in his chair beside Laura and waited for him to hand out the math test Megan had been dreading.
"How much did you study?"
"Not a lot," Steve admitted in response to Laura's hissed question. "I was... busy over the weekend."
Pencil already in hand, he brushed his long hair out of his face just as the test paper was delivered to his desk. Laura's query had left him slightly concerned. Quickly consulting his daughter's memory, he realized she really hadn't studied before this test, not even when she was supposed to have been doing it. Not that it should matter, right? I did college-level calculus, after all. How hard could this class be?
Then Steve saw the test paper and his mind went blank.
Well, not blank. Not exactly. He remembered he needed a pedi before too long. He thought about asking Laura to come to the mall with him later to get one, if their moms would give them the money. He wondered if the boy in English class -- Darren -- thought he was pretty.
I don't know the answer to this one. It was a simple enough question, but he couldn't wrap his head around it. As soon as the class had gone quiet, Megan's thoughts had begun invading his head, driving out his own. With the clock ticking, Steve knew he had to focus if he had any chance of passing this test.
He tried remembering the last time he had seen his wife naked. That seemed like it would be a stimulating, distinctive memory, but as soon as his attention got anywhere near it he found himself blushing and vaguely ill. The closest he could get was a memory of a pool locker room where Janet changed in front of him. One of Megan's memories. Steve sighed in frustration, finally guessing at the answer to the question that was stumping him.
There were several more on the test that were equally difficult. Each time, he tried to focus through a particular memory in his life as Steve. Each time, he found his train of thought derailed and sent toward one of Megan's thoughts. The most disturbing was when he tried to imagine having sex with his wife and ended up thinking of Edward Cullen from the Twilight movie. Judging by the way his heart began racing, his daughter found the actor very attractive.
Mr. Craven allowed students to leave after they handed in their tests. With ten minutes to spare, Laura finished, gave Steve one last smile, and left the room. That top really is pretty. And I wish I had cleavage like that. For Steve, that thought was all he could take. As best he could, he finished the final questions on his test, answering the bonus with "i don't know =)" where the dot on the lowercase i was a tiny heart. Embarrassed, confused, and demoralized, he threw the rest of his stuff back in Megan's pink bag and left the room before the remaining students in the class could even leave their seats.