Strike (Cake) [Completed] (#Wattys2017)

1: Professor

...

Calum was back in his Nimrod muscle shirt and black jeans two minutes before class started. He stuffed everything into his backpack and ran out of the locker room. Thankfully, G Building, where Debate class was, was only a few minutes away. He started to walk with huge strides, not wanting to run and look like an idiot, but not wanting to be late, get another tardy, and run the risk of dropping his grade even lower.

The door to his classroom came into view just as the clock tower started to chime out noon. "Ah, shit," he said, and moved a little faster.

The chimes ended before he got to the door to the lecture hall. When he grasped the handle, he heard Professor Hemmings greeting the class. Shrugging his backpack on tighter, he opened the door as quietly as he could, wishing he'd gotten there half a minute sooner. He stepped through the doorway, eased the door closed, and turned around to find Professor Hemmings looking straight at him.

"Nice to see you, Mr. Hood. Have a seat," he said, and turned back to the board.

Calum sighed and took his seat in the back.

"Today we'll be talking about..." Professor Hemmings wrote the word on the board in sprawling script: "fallacies." He underlined the word in one sweeping motion.

Calum got out a pencil and opened his notebook. He rarely took notes. Mostly the pages were covered in doodles and snippets of words he thought could be song lyrics if he could get more into it. He'd played bass since he was little and could sing pretty well, too. But football had taken over his life, and getting a scholarship to the university with the best team in the district had been the highlight of his sports career. He was going to go pro—he knew it, and expected scouts at the games in spring. Song lyrics weren't important. Still, he liked (even loved, though he wouldn't admit it to himself) what he came up with at random hours of the day:

You're just a little bit out of my limit

From all the letters that I saved, this is everything I didn't say

It hurts in my head and my heart and my chest...won't you please stop loving me to death

Nothing like the rain when you're in outer space

That last was his favorite...but it didn't matter. What mattered right now, maybe even more than four missed penalty kicks in a row was—

"The Ad Hominem fallacy." Professor Hemmings wrote in quick half-cursive, half-print on the chalkboard. The chalk clicked rapidly as the sentence appeared on the black background. "This is when a speaker attacks the character of his opponent rather than rebutting his argument or counteracting his opinions. For example, 'Mr. Hemmings is a bad teacher because he's too tall and has a horrible addiction to cereal.'"

The class chuckled. Calum glanced up at the board and saw it was covered in writing. Had he already missed so much? And he wondered why he couldn't keep his grade. He couldn't focus. He began scribbling down as much information as he could: The Straw Man, Slippery Slope, Equivocation, Bandwagon, Appeal to Ignorance. He didn't know what any of it meant, but he'd look it up later. And he would go to office hours after class. He was in the middle of writing "assuming a claim is true because it hasn't been proven false" when Professor Hemmings called on him.

"Mr. Hood, can you tell us who might be one to use the appeal to ignorance?"

Calum jerked his head up. "What? Oh...um...I'm not sure, sir."

Professor Hemmings smiled. "Anyone else?" he asked, turning away. Another student answered correctly.

Crap, Calum thought. I've got to get my head in the game. Actually, I need to get my head out of the game. And into schoolwork. I already know football...I don't know this.