“Genius?” he suggests, surfacing with a grin.
“That’s not the word I was going for.”
“It should be. Look, Rita’s already wet. Might as well finish the job.”
He’s right. Rita’s soaked from the splash, looking like the world’s most offended goat. She’s given up trying to escape and has moved on to looking personally betrayed.
“Come on, girl,” Callie says, leading her into the shallows. “Let’s get this over with.”
What happens next is twenty minutes of barely controlled pandemonium. Rita discovers she can swim, which no one expected. She paddles around in circles while we try to wash her, which involves a lot of splashing and cursing and Wyatt somehow ending up with shampoo in his mouth.
“Why does it taste like coconut?” he demands, spitting.
“Because it’s infused with coconut oil,” Callie explains. “Rita has sensitive skin.”
“Rita has sensitive everything,” I correct, trying to keep the goat from climbing onto my shoulders. “Including her sense of drama.”
“She gets it from her owner,” Wyatt observes, which earns him a splash from Callie.
The retaliation starts a water fight that quickly devolves into everyone soaked and Rita somehow the cleanest. She’s standing in the shallows, watching us with disdain.
“We’re supposed to be washing the goat,” Callie protests as I drag her underwater.
“We’re multitasking,” I tell her when we surface, her body pressed against mine in the current.
“This isn’t multitasking, this is?—”
Whatever she was going to say gets cut off whenBoone accidentally slips on a rock and takes Wyatt down with him. They both go down with spectacular flailing, and when they come up, Wyatt’s lost his hat and Boone’s tangled in creek weed.
“Help!” Boone yells dramatically, flailing his arms.
“You’re in three feet of water,” Wyatt points out.
“I’m drowning in three feet of water!”
Callie’s laughing so hard she has to clutch my arm for support. “You’re all ridiculous,” she manages between gasps.
“You’re the one who brought a goat to a creek for a bath,” I remind her.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“When has anything involving Rita ever been a good idea?”
She considers this. “Fair.”
Rita chooses that moment to demonstrate her swimming skills by paddling directly into the middle of the creek where the current’s strongest. For a moment, we just watch, assuming she knows what she’s doing. Then the current catches her and she starts moving downstream. Fast.
“Rita!” Callie shouts, diving after her.
The next few minutes are a blur of everyone scrambling through the water, trying to catch a determined goat who’s decided to see where the creek goes. Wyatt manages to grab the lead rope just as Rita’s about to round a bend, and we all converge, breathless and soaked.
We finally make it back to shore, waterlogged and exhausted. Rita shakes herself off, sending water flying.
Then she proceeds to roll in the dirt.
“Are you kidding me?” Callie stares at her now mud-covered goat. “We just spent thirty minutes?—”
“Forty-five,” Wyatt corrects.
