“I know,” Tom said. “But the candy car is this way.”

Kate had almost forgotten about the candy car. She was tired—but you could never be too tired for candy.

Kate wasn’t sure where it was, but it turned out that while she was hanging out in the library Tom had—with his usual surplus of energy—been off exploring the whole train from front to back. From the outside the candy car looked like an ordinary red metal boxcar, even a little on the rusty side—inside it was full of bright light and rainbow colors. A wave of cool air rolled out, heavy with the smell of sugar. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with polished wooden shelves, and every inch of every shelf was loaded with candy. It was like Aladdin’s cave crossed with the candy counter at a supermarket and multiplied by a million.

There were bundles of lollipops, and coils of black and red licorice ropes, and barrels of caramel cubes and fruit chews and sours and mints and nut clusters and brittles and candy canes and gobstoppers and honeycombs and gumballs and Swedish Fish. There were heaps of marshmallows and hard candies, and armies of gummy bears, and fields of candy corn. Candy necklaces hung from the ceiling.

There was a machine where you could type any flavor and it would deliver that flavor of jelly beans, by the pound. There was every candy bar ever made. Above all there was chocolate: milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, solid bricks and bars of it wrapped in silver and gold foil. There were trays and trays of chocolates stuffed with caramel and cherries and nuts and nougat and coconut and toffee and cream and pretzels and everything else you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn’t.

It was all arranged by size and type and flavor and color, as neatly and carefully as a library. And it was all free, and it was all theirs.

“You laughed when I asked for a candy car,” Tom said.

“I know.”

“You thought it was funny.”

“Whatever! You were right! Don’t rub it in!” She hated when Tom was right. But if he had to be right about something, she was glad it was this. “Come on, let’s see if we can eat one of everything. Except the coconut ones. Those are all yours.” She hated coconut almost as much as she hated Tom being right.

But that night she never even made it past the chocolates, and Tom got stuck trying to stump the jelly bean machine till he couldn’t eat any more.