Fern Fisher was not a happy person. That is not to say that she was miserable, but she was not jumping for joy, which is dangerous in any situation.
School was just around the corner again. She was busy worrying about her new teachers, relearning math, and finally finding out what an adjective was.
This was not her reason for being unhappy.
She was also in her high schools band. And this meant that she needed to start attending marching practices and memorizing music to try and get a coveted marching spot.
This was not her reason for being unhappy.
She had received something strange earlier that morning. It was a strange letter, about a strange organization, sent to her by a strange person known only as D.
This could be her reason for not being happy.
She had opened it, read it, checked the back in case she missed something, and was confused. She checked it for invisible ink, eraser marks, white out, and was still completely stumped. She had rechecked the send to address, the return address (which there was non of), which post office had sent it, and was now quiet frustrated with no answers.
In a fit of annoyance she tried to chuck it out her window. It was not a success seeing as it was a piece of paper and it only got a few inches away from her. After this she let out a squeak of anger and stepped on the letter, after which she promptly stormed off vowing to not think about it.
However, as we all know, when one says they will not think about something, they will usually think of nothing but it. Going through the day as a zombie and burning their breakfast toast, which is unpleasant on a good day.
Fern was no exception. She thought of the letter all day. She thought of it during the night. She thought of it first thing in the morning when her father arrived at her room on a cane, shouting that she should keep her letters off the floor so people would not slip on them.
That only made the situation worse. Now the letter sat on her desk, looking rather innocent under the moonlight. Or at least it would have if Fern had not in fact been the recipient of such a strange thing. So instead she sat and stared at it all the next day, not moving from her bed and playing hooky.
Hooky is a game one can play to get out of school, work, or a torturous interrogation. Playing it during the summer is very odd seeing as you could frolic outside if you are not tied to a chair. She was, however, desperate for the letter to reveal its true meaning and so she pulled out all the stops.
Pulling out all the stops is a phrase which here means, wouldn't let anything come between her and a letter of mysterious origins.
It is sad enough to know that she didn't know what such a thing was doing in her house. You surely don't need to know what the truth was behind it. I suggest you turn back now before this gets ugly. Ugly is here being used to describe a bad situation like then one I'm in now.
Honestly stop it. You don't know what you're in for.You really want to know don't you? Fine, be that way.
I suppose I then cannot stop you from reading what I'm afraid I must type now.
The letter was not meant for Fernella Fisher, or fern for short. It was actually meant for an orphan by the name of Violet Baudelair who had made up then name Fernella Fisher in an attempt to thwart Count Olaf.
The letter, you see,was labeled incorrectly.
Instead of being delivered to 30012 Staleber Drive, it was unfortunately delivered to 30021 Staleber Drive. This mix up caused many horrible things to happen.
The first and foremost being how haunted poor Ms. Fisher for the rest of her life, causing her to become a nomad in search of the truth. Which she would never find. She would die while talking to the one person in the world who could have told her what it was all about, but alas, she had a heart attack while ordering a coffee from him.
Then next most notable thing that happened was that Violet would then assume her friends to be dead. For which she rushed head first into Olaf's HQ only to find that her deceased friends where walking about, taking notes, and telling her hello. She promptly fainted and had to spend several hours talking to each to convince herself that they were in fact the Quagmires.
The next most notable thing is not very notable. It was simply that one Duncan Quagmire learned to double-check every address he wrote down. He did this after Violet explained she never got the letter and only showed up on time by an odd coincidence, and was then slapped rather hard by the worried girl. And that made him rethink his memory length and strength.
It would also be one Duncan Quagmire who would be selling a coffee to a woman with huge bags under her eyes, and smelled not dissimilar to kitty litter. She would just be in the middle of asking him the meaning of a letter she'd received over thirty years ago when she would be struck with a fatal heart attack.
This was the most tragic part of Fern Fisher's story. It would also be the reason she was angry for the next two hundred years, and had preceded to haunt Duncan Quagmire and his kin. Which despite popular belief was not because she never got her coffee. The missing coffee, however, didn't really help the situation.