I wanted to spend time with the baby goat.

So I chose farm as my next activity.

I asked Joplin if she wanted to come, too.

But she shook her head.

“The barn’s too stinky,” she said.

I knew what she meant.

We’d visited the barn on the camp tour,

and it was a little stinky.

But just with animal smell.

Like at the zoo.

“Your nose gets used to it,” I told Joplin.

“My nose would rather play soccer,” she said.

So we walked together to the soccer field.

She stayed there, to play.

And I kept going.

The barn stood, wide and white,

at the other end of the field.

It was dark and cool inside,

and a little stinky.

A few girls had arrived before me.

They were peering into a wire cage in a back corner

and saying things like,

“So cute!” and

“So fuzzy!” and

“Look at its little wings!

I knew little chicks were hopping around in that cage.

I’d seen them during the camp tour.

They were cute and fuzzy,

with tiny little wings.

But still.

I preferred the floppy-eared goat.

He was lying in the back of his pen,

on top of some hay.

Just thinking.

When I stopped in front of his gate,

he sniffed the air a little,

then pulled himself up and walked toward me.

He was brown from head to toe,

the color of my dad’s morning coffee.

“They’d better not name you Spot,” I told that goat.

“You don’t have a single spot on you.”

He pushed his nose through a gap in the gate.

I scratched underneath his chin

and kept thinking about names.

He didn’t seem like an Antoine.

Maybe a Sweet Pete.

But definitely,

definitely

a Cornelius.

“Don’t you think so?”

I asked him,

patting his back.

“Don’t you think you’re a Cornelius?”

He gave a nice bleat.

I took that for a yes.

I couldn’t keep talking to him, though.

Because other girls arrived

and stood beside me at the gate.

Including curly-haired Kylie.

Before long,

the farm counselor told us it was time

for the goat’s bath.

We went into the pen

and wet him gently with a hose

and rubbed baby shampoo into his soft coat

and rinsed him off.

He did not like the rinsing!

He jumped around

and shook his whole body,

splattering water all over us.

Then the counselor looped a leash over his head

and let me walk him out into the sun,

so he could dry.

As I led clean Cornelius out onto the grass,

I thought,

I’m walking a goat!

He wasn’t a dog.

But still.

For that moment,

I could pretend

he was mine.