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
Completely untrue I say my eyes practically cresting my forehead Adam smiles at me You can do anything Zin Remember that he says before returning to guard duty I go back to winding the scarf around Ronny’s neck On the last twist a car horn honks and Adam and I both jump I instinctively hide behind Ronny and Adam drops the duffel bag to leap behind a shrub But no car pulls up and nobody appears Campus remains still Since the honk was a false alarm I pop back out from behind Ronny For a moment I don’t see any sign of Adam That is until he emerges from the foliage pretending to walk up an imaginary staircase He gets taller and taller the shrub first at his shoulder then his waist then his knee Hold on he says I need to go downstairs for a second Then he turns around to walk down an imaginary
staircase too I laugh as quietly as I can Watching Adam’s pranks never gets old but still we have a yarn bomb to finish before the sun comes up Want to put on the final touch I ask Adam bounds over the shrub and back to the statue He reaches into his bag to retrieve the last part of Ronny’s ensemble a length of metallic gold fringe With a flourish he wraps it around the rattlesnake’s tail where it twinkles like tinsel Then we stand back to admire the new Ronny almost every inch of him now covered in yarn What do you think I ask Adam Fancy rattlesnake he says More than fancy Spectacular Amazing He balls up the duffel bag and tosses it in the air before catching it The sky is growing brighter now our signal that it really is time to go Farewell Ronny the Amazing says Adam as the sun
