Everybody Knows

by Jordan Harper

Don’t worry about the truth. It’s not that the truth isn’t important. It just doesn’t matter. A lie that is never believed by anyone can still have power—if it gives people permission to do what they want to do anyway. Have a bloody glove—the objective correlative, the one real thing you can point to that makes the lies feel solid. Give them horror or give them heartstrings. Nothing else sticks.

She wonders about doctors—when they look at someone, can they even see the person anymore? Or do they just see the meat, the guts and veins and tumors? Because when Mae looks at people, all she sees are secrets.

Mae thought about how some people had bad things done to them, and they just couldn’t wait to push that pain onto someone else.

Hannah is someone who constantly lives her truth, even if that truth is a lie. She figures maybe that’s just what an actress is.

She leans into him in that way dogs have, like they want to mix their molecules up with yours.

That means somebody with deep pockets. Figure the target is rich. Figure he’s powerful.” “Or,” she says, “figure he’s rich but not powerful.” “Aren’t they the same thing?” “Not at a certain level, not all the time,” she says. “Real power comes from generating profit for other people. That’s the rule,

Everybody talks about how actresses are crazy. Nobody talks about how they got that way.

We all think that the face we show the world is a mask, and the one we carry deep inside ourselves is the real us. But what if it’s the other way around? What if you are what you do, not how you feel about it?”