Property of Calypso

   The twelfth tree in front of Allen Redvers Middle School bloomed pink two months early. It was only March; the flowers were the effect of the striped blue-and-yellow crochet wrapped around its trunk and branches like a sweater. Carden Bailey and Ozri Geller stood in front of it, gazing up.

   “Calypso strikes again,” said Ozri. Carden didn’t answer, touching the tree with one pink-gloved hand. It was warm, as if it had gotten there by time travel from some distant May. A laminated tag zip-tied to one of the branches read, ‘You’ve been yarnbombed by Calypso!’

   “You think I could climb this if I tried?” Ozri asked.

   “What? No,” Carden said, but Ozri was already running at the tree. He got two feet up the trunk before he fell on his butt.

   Carden rolled her eyes and helped him up. She crouched down to pick up a few pencils that had fallen out of his backpack, but then she paused. Under the bush next to her sat a little red spiral-bound notebook.

   “Look what I found,” she said, picking it up. She handed it to Ozri, and he flipped open the front cover. Both their eyes went wide.

   “Property of Calypso,” Ozri read.

   “The same Calypso that did this to the tree,” Carden breathed. “They must have dropped it.”

   Ozri frowned. “What do we do with it?”

   “I don’t know. We can’t just leave it out here,” Carden said. “It’s already a little water-damaged, and it’s supposed to rain soon. That’ll ruin it for sure.”

   “Should we put it in the lost and found?”

   Carden shook her head. “How would Calypso find it? They probably don’t go to Redvers, and even if they did, we don’t know that they would look in the lost and found. Besides, somebody else could take it out.”

   Ozri’s phone buzzed, and he checked the screen.

   “We need to get home,” he said. “Our moms will both flip out if we’re not home by three-thirty at least. Just take it and we’ll figure out something later. I’ll come over after dinner; I can tell my parents we’re doing homework.”

   Carden couldn’t think of a better option, so she agreed.

   After dinner, Ozri burst into her room.

   “I biked here in forty-five seconds,” he said. “That’s a personal record. So, you have it?”

   Carden tapped the red notebook sitting on the corner of her dresser. “Obviously. I waited for you to get here before I looked at it.”

   “Awesome.” Ozri dropped his backpack by the door and walked over to her.

   Carden opened the notebook. Inside were pages and pages of scrawled letters and numbers.

   “…Wow,” she said, flipping through it. “Okay. We have numbers and, uh, what looks like maybe words? Let’s just say numbers and letters.”

   “8 x 40,” Ozri read aloud. “21 x 50, 12 x 9.”

   “Multiplication problems?” Carden suggested.

   Ozri shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. It kinda looks like measurements, like how they measure wood at hardware stores.”

   “Measurements of the things Calypso yarnbombs?”

   Ozri nodded. “That sounds right. But what do the letters next to the measurements mean?”

   “CRL/LTA,” Carden said. “That’s the first one, try looking it up.”

   Ozri pulled his computer out of his backpack and sat down on Carden’s bed. “All I’m getting is finance companies,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what it is.”

   “Hm. What about BRRGHS?”

   “It’s autocorrecting me to ‘bergs.’”

   Carden tapped her finger against the page. “Wait—FRST/STLLSN. I’ve seen that before, come look.”

   Ozri set the computer aside.

   “That’s the road sign by the baseball field!” He said. “Farist/Stillson. They’re street names.”

   “So, BRRGHS…” Carden said. “That must be Burroughs. That’s close to where you live.”

   “Yeah, the old graveyard is on that street,” Ozri said. “I remember seeing one of Calypso’s yarnbombs there. My mom said it whispered comfort to the mourners.”

   “So we know they’re street names,” said Carden. “It’s got to be the locations and measurements of the things they yarnbomb.”

   Ozri gestured for Carden to flip the page. “What’s next?”

   Carden flipped the page. “Full of the same thing.”

   Ozri began to read aloud again, this time from a column to the right of the measurements. “F13, A8, S22…it’s kinda like squares on a chess board.”

   “Yeah,” Carden said. “The numbers go on too far, but it’s kinda similar.”

   For a while they just sat there, looking at it, before Ozri broke the silence.

   “The numbers don’t ever go higher than thirty-one,” he said.

   Carden jumped up. “Like days in a month!”

   “Exactly!” Ozri said. “Do you think they’re dates?”

   Carden ran her finger down the line. “F12,” she murmured. “F23, M2, M8, M14—it’s March fourteenth today.”

   “And look what’s written next to M14. ‘RDVRS TR 12.’”

   “Redvers Middle School,” Carden translated. “Tree twelve.”

   “The tree that was yarnbombed this morning.”

   They flipped through the later pages. As the notebook went on, the section with the dates ended and they came to lists. Lists of different types of yarn, lists of random words, lists they couldn’t begin to decipher.

   “This is…” Carden began. “This is so much. They must’ve had this for years.”

   “We need to find them,” Ozri said. He was up and pacing now. “We need to find Calypso, and we have to return the notebook.”

   Carden flipped back to the pages with the dates. There was only one after ‘M14: RDVRS TR 12.’ It read ‘M20: JHNFRST.’

   “John Farist,” Ozri said. “There’s a statue of him at my sister Alisa’s school—John Farist High.”

   Carden looked up. “You know what this means, right?”

   A grin spread over Ozri’s face.

   “Stakeout.”

   On the night of March 19th, it rained. It was a great, torrential rain, and the next day, Ozri and Carden stood outside John Farist High School, looking at a statue with a midsized orange crochet Kraken wrapped around its shoulders.

   “Great,” said Carden dismally. “What are we supposed to do now?”

   The Kraken waved its arms slightly. “Arrgh, me hearties. X marks the spot,” it said in a faraway voice.

   “C’mon,” Ozri said. “We’re going to be late for school.”

   Two days later, Ozri burst into Carden’s room once again. This time, he carried a large roll of paper under his arm.

   “What’s that?” Carden said.

   “A map of the town. Alisa helped me print it out.”

   Carden perked up. “What’s it for?”

   Ozri rolled out the map, made of taped-together pieces of printer paper, on Carden’s floor. “We are going to find Calypso if it’s the last thing we do.”

   Through the evening, the two mapped out every place Calypso had yarnbombed.

   “Think, think, think,” Carden said to herself. “If I were Calypso, where would I strike next?”

   “They like busy places,” Ozri offered. “Statues. Things that a lot of people will come across—remember last year when they yarnbombed a parking meter so it pre-paid for everyone’s parking time?”

   “Yeah, I remember,” said Carden. She looked back at the map on the floor, now covered in pencil marks. “We have to try and predict them. What areas has Calypso been trending towards?”

   “Well, they did the fence by the elementary school a couple weeks ago,” Ozri said. “Then they hit the tree in front of Redvers. Then the Kraken on John Farist.”

   Carden snapped her fingers, turning to Ozri. “That’s it! They’ve been doing schools.”

   Ozri sat up from where he had been lazing on Carden’s bed. “The university.”

   “And they strike every six days, obviously,” Carden continued. “2, 8, 14, 20—it’s a pattern that increases by six.”

   “Obviously?” Ozri said. “Maybe to you, miss A-average-in-math.”

   “The twenty-sixth,” she said, oblivious. “Calypso’s going to yarnbomb somewhere visible at the university on the twenty-sixth.”

   On the night of the twenty-fifth, Carden and Ozri finally got to do their stakeout. It wasn’t hard to guess where Calypso would strike—there was an old art installation in the exact middle of campus, something wiggly and abstract that had been created by old students years ago. They didn’t have to wait long, either. It was only 11:03 when Carden caught a figure in the corner of her eye. She shook Ozri, who had been nodding off.

   The two straightened up and strode out from behind the bush they had been hiding in. Their coats made a loud rustling noise, and the figure turned. It was a girl only a few years older than them, her black hair pulled into two distinctive puffs.

   “I think we have something that belongs to you,” Carden said. She held out the little red book.

   “Oh my god,” Calypso said. She walked over quickly to meet them. “My notebook. I’ve been looking for this for weeks.” She looked at them. “How did you know I was going to be here tonight?”

   They told her.

   “Your identity’s safe, though,” Carden said.

   “Yeah,” Ozri added, “we won’t tell anyone what we know.”

   “Um, thanks,” Calypso said.

   Carden nodded, and the two turned to leave.

   “Wait,” said Calypso. Ozri and Carden turned back.

   “You know, these things don’t crochet themselves,” Calypso said, hefting a backpack that looked to be full of her latest yarnbomb. “You put in all that effort—you should get a chance to be a part of the secret. Maybe start with helping me set this up?”