2
YARN-BOMB FLOP
Adam was wrong.
Two hours later I’m back at school, and this time I am definitely not fist-pumping the air.
The rest of campus is happy and bubbling about summer vacation starting. There’s even a table set up with brownies and cupcakes. I’m the only one not happy.
Ronny the Rattlesnake is naked — again.
Someone must’ve taken off his adornments. Someone must not understand knitting or public art and has probably never even heard of yarn bombing or anything else cool. I mean, yarn bombers secretly put an exuberant sweater on the whole world. That’s what I wanted to do with Ronny.
Ugh. Nobody gets this stuff besides Adam. Nobody gets me.
“Zinnia Flossdrop,” Ms. Amaranth, my vice principal, says as she approaches. “Just who I was looking for. You’ll be spending the day in my office.”
I close my shocked mouth and breathe through my nose. “What?” I can’t comprehend what she’s saying.
“Detention. Today. My office.”
I’m confused. This is the last day of school. And I didn’t even know you could get detention in the vice principal’s office. I’ve only heard of the normal after-school-in-the-library kind, and I’ve never had that. Pretty sure my mom’s bun would unravel if I did. Dr. Flossdrop is not the kind of person to approve of something that involves sitting around doing nothing.
“What do you mean?” I ask again.
“You’re the one responsible for putting a costume on the school mascot,” says Ms. Amaranth.
I want to tell her it isn’t a costume, but that would be incriminating. “Why do you think I would do that?”
“Zinnia, I’ve been informed that you’re a knitter.” She says knitter like it’s a bad word.
“Who told you that?”
“Someone I can trust.”
No one comes to mind I can trust besides Adam. Operation Yarn Bomb was our secret, and he was my accomplice.
I follow the vice principal’s gaze to the brownie and cupcake table. Next to it stand Nikki, Margot, and Lupita — my former friends. The four of us were once a pack. We used to roller-skate and have sleepovers and stay up late talking and laughing.
But that was months and months ago, at the beginning of seventh grade. And before that, in sixth. And before that, in fifth. We used to be Nikki, Margot, Lupita, Zinnia — NMLZ, like animals, for short. Nikki was the funniest and most outgoing, prone to random cartwheels. Margot was a dancer and super confident; she’d started wearing thin headbands this year, a few of them all at once. Lupita was the sweet one; her favorite color was purple, and she hiked every weekend with her family. I was the one known for wearing only charcoal gray and having massive, curly hair.
But something changed this year. Now they’re NML. One animal. Without me. I’m a lone Z off on my own.
NML stare in my direction. Their faces wear smiles — fake, innocent ones. The smiles of ex-friends who can’t be trusted. The smiles of people who spy on you and, when the time comes, spill it about all the stuff you thought you’d kept under wraps.
I can’t smile back at them. I want to. I want to smile like I don’t care at all that they’ve betrayed me. But I do care. And if I try to smile, my eyes might betray me and cry.
I take one last look at Ronny over my shoulder. Poor Ronny the Rattlesnake without so much as a pair of underwear, much less a fabulous yarn-bomb outfit.
I know exactly how he feels — exposed.
Ten minutes later, while the other kids are outside devouring baked goods, I’m in the vice principal’s office.
The administrative assistant is eating a cupcake with chocolate frosting and yellow sprinkles — school/rattlesnake colors — at his desk. He hands me a pencil and paper and tells me to write an essay about what I plan to do on my summer vacation. Then he goes back to eating his cupcake. Slowly. Frosting with sprinkles first.
I figure since I’ve already been betrayed as a knitter, I might as well work on my never-ending scarf. That’s better than writing an essay no one will ever read.
Sitting down, I open my backpack to retrieve my scarf and the wooden knitting needles attached to it. It’s my never-ending scarf because, well, it never ends. I’ve continued knitting it long after it became an appropriate length for a scarf. Every time I get to the end of a skein of yarn, instead of binding it off and being done, I join on yet another skein in a different color. I’m on bright red right now. At this point the scarf barely fits in my backpack and would probably be better suited for a fashionable giraffe than a human. But I don’t want to stop.
I knit and knit, getting lost in all the loops. The administrative assistant doesn’t say anything about my lack of writing — maybe because he feels bad for me.
With each knit, each purl, each loop, each stitch, detention and NML and all that stuff gets further and further away. That’s why I can’t stop knitting. It’s so much better when all that other stuff disappears.
I daydream about what I’ll do this summer instead of writing it down. I want it to be exactly the same as last summer. Me and Adam again. The way it should be.
That’s part of why this morning’s yarn bomb was so great — it was a way for us to hang out, like we always used to. Just like we will this summer. We’ll eat ice cream at Scoops together. Watch French movies at Aunt Mildred’s. Do the five-dollar-bill trick at Dr. Flossdrop’s office.
Adam and I did that trick a million times last summer. It involves taping a five-dollar bill to some clear fishing line, putting it in the middle of the empty waiting room, and waiting for someone to walk in and reach for the money. That’s when Adam yanks it away.
When that someone realizes they’ve been tricked, Adam always does this ridiculous over-the-top bow — he waves one arm around all silly, twirling his hand and gesturing, and sticks one leg out in front of him. It’s his signature. Admittedly it’s pretty weird, but that bow makes people laugh every time instead of being mad.
I sit in detention, knitting and purling and daydreaming. I can’t wait to see Adam to tell him all about this whole horrible yarn-bomb flop. He’s the only one who’ll understand.