“Well, it sure seems to grown-ups like you spend all your time watching TV and playing video games instead of paying attention to real life.”

Adults always said scoldy stuff like that, but Kate was surprised to hear it coming from Uncle Herbert. She’d been starting to hope he wasn’t like that—but of course he was. All grown-ups were.

“Why should I pay attention to real life?” she said. “Real life is boring!”

“How do you know it’s boring if you don’t pay attention to it?”

“Well, maybe real life should pay attention to me sometime!”

“Perhaps,” Uncle Herbert said quietly, like he was trying to sound all mysterious, “the world is more interesting than it appears.”

“Well, that would be great.” Kate crossed her arms. “Because it appears really boring!”

“What about that mysterious fire in the train. Is that boring? That is why you snuck out here, isn’t it?”

“Oh, right,” Kate said, brought up slightly short. “I guess it is.”

She took a step toward the train, then turned back and gave Uncle Herbert a look.

“This isn’t over, though.”

“No,” Uncle Herbert agreed. “It isn’t.”

4

It Really Wasn’t Over

NOW THAT KATE WAS RIGHT UP CLOSE TO THE TRAIN, she noticed something else: White steam was floating out of a pipe on top of it and swirling around its wheels.

Suddenly she felt a bit nervous.

“Go on,” Uncle Herbert said. “This is it. Real life is being interesting for a change. It’s paying attention to you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Kate didn’t especially like having her own words quoted back at her, so without answering she climbed up into the cab, the metal rungs hard under her bare feet. Inside the cab was all lit up by glowing firelight. That cold, sooty box they’d found before was actually a little fireplace, and somebody had built a fire in it. She could feel the heat coming off it in the night air.

Something else, too: Before, the tender was empty, but now it was full of coal, a huge heap of it. Tom climbed up behind her.

“Cool,” he said. “It’s like camping. We could sleep out here.”

“It’s like that cabin with the woodstove,” Kate said. “That time we went skiing and Dad hurt his knee on the first day and was in a bad mood the whole rest of the week. You were little.”

“I remember, though.” Tom perched on one of the seats. “That was when I lost Foxy.”

Foxy, full name Foxy Jones, had been Tom’s stuffed fox from when he was a baby. It broke Tom’s little heart when he lost him—he still couldn’t read Fantastic Mr. Fox without crying. Weird how boys had feelings, too, but pretended they didn’t.