The V.F.D. Years

There was a time when my whole world revolved around a very special series of hardcovers with deckled edges.

I think it started with my mom, handing me a copy of The Bad Beginning. Or maybe I picked it up on my own — I don’t remember the exact moment, just the feeling that followed: like I’d opened a door into a world that was darker, funnier, and more clever than anything I’d read before.

A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I was in fourth or fifth grade when I started them, and I kept reading all through middle school until the series ended. The Baudelaire orphans felt like the kind of kids I could’ve known, quick-thinking, observant, quietly brave. They weren’t magical, but they were resourceful. They didn’t always win, but they always tried. And they noticed things. I loved that about them.

My best friend Ciera loved them too. We each had our own copies, and we talked about them constantly. Over the phone, or late at night on AIM, the way us millennials did back then. We’d send each other quotes or theories. Talk about how weird Count Olaf was, or which of the Baudelaire siblings we felt most like. (I was definitely more Violet than Klaus, for what it’s worth.)

I always had the hardcovers. Lined up in order on my bookshelf, their matching spines felt like part of a secret code.

I flew through them. There was always another one, waiting just around the corner with a title like a riddle and a cover that promised secrets. I don’t know if I understood every word at the time, but that didn’t matter. They made me feel smart. Like someone trusted me to hold a story that was a little complicated. A little sad. A little strange.

And I held it gladly.

There was something comforting in how consistent the books were, how the Baudelaires always had each other, even when everything else fell apart. How they made sense of chaos by staying curious. How the narrator spoke directly to the reader, warning us again and again to put the book down, to turn away.

But we never did.

Because we wanted to know. We had to know. And maybe that’s where it started, this lifelong need to understand people. To figure out the mystery, even when the ending might not be neat or happy.

Even now, when I see one of those jewel-toned spines at a thrift store or library sale — sapphire, maroon, mustard, sea-glass blue — something in me lights up. I remember the rush of a new volume. The click of AIM messages. The feel of the hardcover in my hands. The soft, secret joy of finding a story that made my weirdness seem normal.

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