Tom just lay there for a while, but he couldn’t stay still for long. He always seemed to have more energy than he could comfortably store in his body, and he had to burn it off somehow. He started singing under his breath. Then he started drumming along with the singing. Then he kicked the bottom of Kate’s bunk. Then he pretended to be shot and fell off the bed to try to make her laugh.

Kate didn’t laugh.

“Go away,” she said.

“At least we get to play on it for a week. It’s better than nothing.”

Somebody must’ve told Tom once that you were supposed to look on the bright side in situations like this. She wished he wouldn’t. It was annoying. Nobody ever took Tom’s presents away. He never got sent to his room. Or it seemed like that anyway.

More silence. He still didn’t go away.

“I think it’s on fire,” Tom said.

“Good.”

“Why are you being mean about the train?”

“Because I hate it.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate everything! Including you!”

“That’s not very nice.”

“I’m not trying to be nice!”

Tom was looking out the window.

“Well, it’s your lucky day because the train really is on fire. Seriously. Look at it.”

Kate looked out the window. She frowned. There was the tiniest flicker of what looked like warm firelight in the cab of the steam engine.

“That’s strange,” Kate whispered.

“Do you think it’s really on fire?”

“How could it be on fire? It’s made of metal.”

They slipped out of Kate’s room together, and out the back door onto the evening lawn. The grass was cool on their bare feet. You’d think that at this point Kate and Tom would have alerted their parents that there might possibly be a flaming steam engine on their property, but they didn’t. Something interesting was happening, and Kate didn’t want the grown-ups to swoop in and take it away. Not yet.

“Hey, look at that,” Tom said. “More tracks.”

He was right: That afternoon the train had just been on a little stub of track, but now bright new silvery steel tracks curved away from it through the grass.

“I thought that was a good idea you had,” said a voice from the shadows. “Connecting them with the ones in the woods.”

Uncle Herbert was standing there, leaning against the train. Kate hadn’t seen him.

“It wasn’t a good idea, it was a stupid idea,” Kate said. “Those tracks are all old and rusty, like my dad said, and they don’t go anywhere, and even if they did, the train doesn’t move. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I had noticed, actually,” he said. “Kids aren’t the only ones who notice things, you know.”

“Well, it sure seems like it sometimes.”