Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Monologue 2 ❯ Monologue 2 ( Chapter 1 )

I like to see things in black and white. Everyone I know has said that about me. My mother. My father. My sisters. My friends. My shrink. But I never thought it was really true. Just because I try to categorize people into the categories of Good Person and Bad Person doesn't mean I am narrow minded. I like to think I am organized.

 

I have never been unable to slip someone comfortably into a category. It seems as if everyone I have ever knows fit in one of the two categories, and no one has ever spilled over. To me, know one is that in-depth. I thought that, until I met Bella and Nymphadora.

 

Despite her name, I never found Nymphadora very interesting. She wasn't a person to me. She was a shell, empty and cold. I never wanted to get to know her, more then anything because of everyone's almost inhuman attraction to her. She was like a female dog in heat and everyone else was a pound of horny male dogs absolutely bursting to make puppies. I hated it, and I found it irksome that everyone followed her so blindly.

 

Bella I loved. She was a bubbly, plucky girl who reminded me of a Disney princess. She was open and talkative, and we became friends simply because we adored each others hair. Mine, long and red, was her inspiration for approaching me in the first place. I was all too eager to be friends with this girl who made me feel important. No matter what miner situation Bella found herself in, she always asked my advice. I thought of her as a little sister, but I never told her that.

 

Being friends with Bella meant hearing about Nymphadora. Not my favorite topic, but it never failed to be interesting. She had quite a strange view of life, and an equally strange way of expressing it. One thing I noticed about her that struck a nerve was the way she talked. Always proper and elegant grammar. Always. It was beautiful to listen to, yet hard to respond to. I thought she belonged in mid-evil France. I also thought her name should be Claudia.

 

However, these were two people I could not place in my beloved categories. I did not know Nymphadora. She was a constant mystery to me. I only knew what Bella told me, and even though it was never malicious, I never liked what I heard. I had a constant mind to put her in the Bad Person category, but something held me back. I felt as if I should know her before I threw her unceremoniously into that list. However, the girl was a fortress.

 

Bella was an immediate Good Person addition. Till I found out her inability to close her mouth. She needed something to say, all the time, everyday, constantly. I became very weary of her, and I tried to be secretive without lying. However, I could read her like a book. It is one talent I feel I can praise myself on. I watch closely, and I learn. I listen, but they don't notice. Half is underestimation. Half is carelessness.

 

I learned thing I never wanted to know. I felt like I knew people without having ever exchanged words with them. I didn't like the feeling, and I didn't like the conversation. And to be honest, I didn't like them.

 

Then again they didn't like me either. I heard them talking about me. I wasn't sure if they knew I was listening. Sometimes I got the feeling they staged it when they knew I would be eavesdropping. That's fine. To each his own.

 

It was a long time before I noticed something change. I noticed a kind of shift in conversation, and appearance. Bella shopped wearing makeup. She insisted upon looking classy and dainty. I remember a fun evening we had at the local shopping mall when we rearranged the earring display so we could buy only the ones we liked and not have to pay extra for what we didn't need. In the end, we never paid.

 

It was in the eyes that I saw it most. There was a certain type of stare Bella would do when she was fantasizing. It was a slight crookedness of the mouth with a squint in one eye, usually the left eye. These were rare occurrences when I first met her, but as the years went on they doubled. I knew something was different, I just couldn't figure out what it was.

 

It was only when I noticed the conversation changes that I put two and two together. Bella never seemed to want to talk about Nymphadora anymore. I knew better then to think these two friends had gotten into a fight. There was not a hostile bone in either of their bodies when it came to each other. I had never seen two people communicate better. Bella was probably the only person I knew who could listen to Nymphadora, understand her, and respond and sound fascinating. That left one logical explanation in my opinion.

 

It took a long time for Bella to come out and tell me. But when she did, she was shocked at my lack of surprise. I told her I already suspected, and she warned me not say anything. I told her I didn't have anyone to tell. No one who would care at least.

 

Nymphadora eventually found out that I knew. She understood Bella's inability to keep quiet about her happiness. I was the first to know, but within a week of the initial event, I became one in a million. They just couldn't keep it quite. I had never seen two happier people. Or a more intelligent, almost annoyingly clever couple. Although, despite their cleverness, they were both incredibly stupid.

 

I can count on one hand the number of times I gave Bella advice that she actually took. Nymphadora never really needed advice, only the knowledge of how to restrain Bella, who was wild and energetic due to her overdose in ecstasy, the good kind of course!

 

It made me jealous to see a couple so in love. I thought that if they could love as strongly as they did for each other, than they would have to fit into the good category. But still I was undecided.

 

I can remember conversations I had with both of them regarding each other. Nymphadora once asked me the way to Bella's heart. I felt like screaming at her “You have it already! Now just keep it safe.” But I didn't. I told her honesty. I thought it was the way to anyone's heart. What Bella actually wanted was to be showered with affection. It was I who wanted honesty from Nymphadora. I wanted to ask her if all the things I had heard about her were true. But I never did. When Nymphadora told me that honesty is work, I questioned her, and eventually found out that to lie is her first impulse. I felt so very bad for her, but at the same time, weary again. I couldn't think of a reason why anyone would have to lie. Of course, I lie often, more than anything because I am a firm believer in self-preservation.

 

The idea to put Nymphadora in the Bad Person category returned. I pushed it aside angrily. I told myself sternly. Wait a little longer. Wait for proof.

 

Bella was the happiest person I ever had the pleasure of encountering. Her joy was clearly present in every conversation and meeting we had. But Nymphadora never looked happy in school. She was the same shell I had “known” all these years. To me, she always looked sad. I would tell Bella this, and she would tell me that Nymphadora wasn't sad. She never seemed sad when we talked, or I heard conversations between her and Bella, but she made me cautious. In a way, there was nothing I wanted to do more then to know what was going on under that bright red pixie cut that I really wanted to style. Yet in another, I thought I was giving her too much thought.

 

I've never seen them together outside of school. I've never seen them be affectionate with each other, yet I knew that they were happy to just lie together, to kiss each other, to cherish each other. They both told me. In that thought, they were of one mind.

 

I started thinking of them as one person. Bella with her gleeful, beautiful, and bright personality that overflowed and drowned a room, and Nymphadora, a seemingly empty shell that drew people in. to me they fit together. They almost seemed to fit inside one another, like a candle in its holder. The fragile candle, easily cracked, yet it burns so very brightly. The detailed glass candle holder, seemingly empty, yet it has a firm protection and, if you look hard enough, transparent.

 

To me they are one person, and they are a category all to themselves.