Home > Work > This Is Not the Jess Show (This Is Not the Jess Show #1)
1 " When kids weren’t making fun of his smile, they were heckling him for being a ginger, as if that alone were a sin against humanity. "
― Anna Carey , This Is Not the Jess Show (This Is Not the Jess Show #1)
2 " There’s nothing like tragedy to reveal the grossest sides of people. "
3 " You think I’d stay here if I was eighteen? Four hundred and eleven days until my birthday. It’s not like I’m counting and re-counting, or in a perpetual state of anxiety over "
4 " Part of me wondered if she’d been the one who’d done it. If Fuller had died right now, would she lie to protect me? Would she go as far as replacing him so I didn’t have to deal with that loss, on top of everything else? But her expression was an open door. She watched me, taking another bite, waiting for my answer. "
5 " That was it. My mom stood, brushing off her jeans. She was a tiny person, with ropey biceps and high, full cheekbones. People said we looked alike, but I couldn’t see it. She was prettier, thinner, and more elegant than I was. She was blond and never did anything to her eyebrows, but they somehow always managed to look perfect. "
6 " Why did Amber and Kristen always feel the need to dissect everything until it was a confusing mess? Didn’t they know I’d never make this up? "
7 " The producers.” he said it quietly, as if that meant something to me. “They hide the cameras and mics in all sorts of things—mirrors, computers, chalkboards, streetlights. They’ve planted mics in bushes and on trees. I think there’s one on your backpack. "
8 " I didn’t have time to be a self-hating mess. As tempting as it was to think and rethink through everything I had and hadn’t done in front of the cameras, we only had a few minutes before we had to go back outside. It was possible they already suspected something was off. "
9 " It’s an actors strike. The extras, the ones with no lines or less than a few lines an episode—they’re renegotiating their contract. It was only supposed to be three or four days, but it keeps dragging on. "
10 " Helene Hart is her name, she studied acting in London, she has a master’s and everything. She’s kind of a force. A brand. She got famous online from doing all this interior design, fashion and lifestyle stuff. I never saw them, but apparently she used to do these long confessional videos about her personal life. That’s why they pitched her this. She’d been on and off with Carter for years— "
11 " The mention of the security team made me uneasy. I could still picture the two men standing in front of the bus, and the authority with which they moved, as if they deserved to be there more than anyone else. It was possible that one choice—taking guitar lessons—had pulled Arthur into my orbit, and trying to help me had cost him his life. I wished I could somehow undo it, that I could somehow go back. "
12 " They’d staged a car crash and a burglary, her illness and death. At what point had that life fumbled out of their control? Was there a moment when they could feel themselves slipping, saying yes to things they shouldn’t have? Did they regret it at all? "
13 " My sister died but she’s not actually dead, I wanted to say. And instead of giving a shit that you’ve been lying to me for my whole life, and it’s all culminated in this most despicable lie, which would’ve been enough to warrant twenty years of therapy, you’re still acting out this narrative of the grieving father. You’re still worried I’m going to notice something’s off. "