1 OPERATION YARN BOMB Ronny the Rattlesnake is naked But not for long Adam meet Ronny I say motioning to the three foot-tall rattlesnake statue my middle school mascot in front of us I’m the only one who calls him Ronny As far as I know I’m the only one who calls him anything at all I decided a while back that Ronny needed a name and
an outfit Today he’ll finally get the outfit part My older brother inspects the statue and gives Ronny’s metal tail a shake hello Zin this yarn bomb is going to be the best ever he says On Adam’s scale of things being great best ever is the highest The very best And Adam’s never been wrong Most of the neighborhood isn’t even awake yet in the muddy pre-dawn light It’s five-thirty in the morning the last day before summer vacation and as planned Adam and I are the only ones at school We’re dressed in dark colors for our secret operation I wear charcoal gray like always and Adam wears all black except for his blue boots which he practically never takes off Ready I ask Adam crinkles his eyebrows making his face look way more serious than usual and nods Then he unzips the retro duffel bag he’s carrying and holds it open in my direction before swiveling his head around to keep watch
My heart jolts from a combination of nerves and excitement as I dig for my yarn-bombing supplies I’m so glad I convinced my brother to do this We haven’t spent time together in way too long Lately it seems like Adam is only interested in doing stuff on his own rather than with me Adam’s the one who told me yarn bombing which is street art for knitters and crocheters existed in the first place He helped me do smaller lesser yarn bombs in our neighborhood the past couple of years Mostly we covered parking meters in colorful knit cozies I made We’d wrap a wool cuff around each pole and Adam would hold it in place while I sewed the seam to keep the yarn bomb on Once we made a whole row of parking meters different colors a rainbow instead of familiar gray But Adam says Ronny the Rattlesnake will be even better than that he’ll be our magnum opus Adam says stuff like magnum opus
I slip the sweater over Ronny’s head It’s gold and brown my school colors and the colors of Southern Pacific rattlesnakes which Ronny is modeled after The sweater alone took me two weeks of furious knitting to make it even has a stripe with a diamond pattern down the back I push and tug and push and tug until most of the snake’s twisty length is covered in the wool tube Then I wrap a thick brown scarf around Ronny’s neck so he looks like he’s either home with an epic sore throat or off to a stylish party But when I glance over at Adam he’s looking off in the distance And not in a keeping-watch kind of way more in a thinking-about-something-else kind of way which is pretty weird Hey I whisper Yarn bomb in progress Adam shakes himself as though he’d fallen asleep and stands up really straight Sorry Momentary lapse But honestly you’re such a pro at this You barely need me
