Due DiligenceI stare at my homework, unable to lift a finger to do it. It’s as if my pen weighs a thousand tons. Or maybe it’s electrified. That’s it—it’s electrified—and if I touch it, it will kill me. Or the paper will slice an artery. Paper cuts are the worst. I have legitimate reasons for not doing my work. Fear of death. But the biggest reason of all is that my mind doesn’t want to go there. It’s in other places.“Dad?”It’s getting toward “that time of year,” and my father sits at the kitchen table with his laptop, stressed and distracted by the new tax code, and some client’s haphazard collection of receipts. “Yes, Caden?”“There’s this boy at school who wants to kill me.”He looks at me, into me, through me. I hate when he does that. He glances back to his laptop, takes a deep breath, and he closes it. I wonder if he’s doing it to hide something from me. No, it couldn’t be. What would he be hiding? That’s crazy. But still . . .“Is this the same kid as before?”“No,”
