Ill Will

by Dan Chaon

Up to that point, you thought that emotions were part of the brain, but then you realize that in truth they are part of the body, that they are processes of your muscles and lungs and bones. My mom was in

Back in the day, Rabbit was one of the smartest kids in school. Straight A, college track, trying-to-learn-calculus-on-his-own-in-eighth-grade sort of dude. Then he began to see through too many things. He cogitated all the hope out of his life, which of course is the danger.

they were experts of their own life story. They had a set of memories that they strung like beads, and this necklace told a sensible tale. But she

“We have theories about how things will turn out, and when we cling to those too tightly, it…closes off our experience of the world. Our ability to see things for what they are.” He considered, and I watched

And he gave me that same smile. That same interested smile he gave his TV show, and his patients, and for the first time I realized that it was not a human smile. It was a protective coloration. An adaptation of some sort. He would project it equally at a television, or a son, or a houseplant, but whatever was really inside him was crouched and peering out stealthily. “Let me know,” he said, “if you’d like to talk.