“Two kitchen cars!” Tom was getting into it.

“Okay. What else?”

There was a long silence.

“A sleeper car,” Kate said. “That’s a thing, right?”

“Sleeper car.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

“Yes,” Uncle Herbert said, “you can.”

Kate thought of something. It was silly, but she couldn’t come up with anything else.

“I would like a library car,” she said. “Like a car that’s all full of books, with big leather chairs and things where you can go and just read.”

She was a little embarrassed, but Uncle Herbert didn’t turn a hair.

“Library car.” He wrote it down. “What else?”

“Movie car,” Tom said.

“No movie car.”

“What?”

“You can watch movies at home.”

“But she got a library car!”

“And I’m sure she’ll let you use it.”

“This is such a rip-off!”

“Fine, I’ll give you your money back. Or wait, that’s right, you didn’t give me any money! You’re getting a completely free train!”

“I want a weapons car, then. Two weapons cars. One for swords, one for guns.”

“No.”

“Video—”

“Nope.”

“Inter—”

“Nope.”

“Fine.” Tom folded his arms. “I would like a candy car. That is my final offer.”

“A candy car!” Uncle Herbert looked so shocked that Kate laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Oh, come on!” Tom said. “It’d be awesome!”

“I’m kidding,” Uncle Herbert said. “You can totally have a candy car. What else?”

“A swimming pool car!” Kate said. It was worth a try. Especially if candy cars were a thing.

“Why not.”

“All right,” she said. “Read that back.”

“Two passenger cars,” Uncle Herbert read. “Two dining cars, two kitchen cars, sleeper car, library car, candy car, swimming pool car.”

Two, four… ten cars. That seemed about right. Maybe a tiny bit short.

“Let’s have a flat car,” Tom said. “Like just plain. We can stand on it and pretend we’re surfing. And we should have boxcars, too. Trains always have boxcars.”

Uncle Herbert wrote on his clipboard.

“I think,” Kate said, “we should have a mystery car. Like we don’t know what’s in it, but it’s something cool.”

She thought she was pushing her luck with that one, but he wrote it down with the rest.

“That’s all I got,” Kate said.

“Me too.”

“Needs one more thing,” Uncle Herbert said.

“What?”

“Come on. Every train has one.”

“Oh—a caboose!”

“Now you’re done.” He turned to go.

“Uncle Herbert?” Tom looked like he had a thought that he was trying hard to formulate into a question. “Why are we here?”

“You mean here in the rail yard?”

“No, I mean—like why are we on a train in the middle of nowhere? Where are we going?”