There are many bad places to grow up — haunted mansions, war zones, theme parks with suspiciously few exits — but Peppa Fuji was confident none of them could match the unique misery of living in a tin can oven with no air conditioning and a dog named Gefr?rem Fleischsalat.

  The caravan rattled as someone ran by it. Someone big.

  “PEPPA!” came the familiar voice of Mason through the intercom — a tin can on a string that ran from the caravan to the garage. “PEPPA!”

  “WHAT?!” Peppa screamed so loud it startled Daisy’s fox two trailers down and probably rattled a few teeth loose in the well.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Mason said calmly, as if nothing had just happened.

  Peppa sighed, put down her peanut butter jar, and pulled a screwdriver from the tangle of wires on her lap. “That’s not breakfast. That’s expired beans and judgment.”

  She stood up from the garage floor, kicking aside an unfinished robot leg and a scorched toaster. The desert sun slapped her across the face the second she opened the garage door. Sweat instantly coated her arms like guilt at a confessional.

  Behind her, her latest invention whirred to life — a half-wired machine she claimed could scramble alien scans and make humans look like cacti. Mason said it looked like a car battery mated with a fan.

  She muttered, “Better than getting shot by aliens again,” and made her way across the sand to the caravan.

  Inside, Alex was already plating the beans with mechanical precision. Her curls were frizzed with heat, and she wore a grease-stained tank top that used to be white, back in the early '70s. Mason sat across from her, legs up, chewing on a piece of jerky like he’d earned it. Their dad, Clyde, was snoring loudly in a lawn chair—indoors—and holding a wrench like it was a teddy bear.

  Alex didn’t look up. “You left the garage door open again.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “It needs to breathe,” Peppa said, flopping into her usual seat and immediately pulling the peanut butter back to her side of the table.

  “You need therapy,” Mason mumbled, poking his beans.

  “You need deodorant.”

  Alex groaned. “Can we all pretend we don’t hate each other long enough to eat in peace?”

  They were halfway through their meal when a scream came from outside.

  “ELVIS IS DEAD!” yelled a voice — high-pitched, frantic, and slightly out of breath.

  Alex bolted upright, knocking over her chair. “Elvis is dead!”

  Mason blinked, mouth full of jerky. “Boo-hoo. Go cry me a river.”

  Peppa didn’t even flinch. She was already back to her machine in the garage. “He’s been trying to die since 1973. Not my fault he finally committed.”

  Night fell like a broken curtain. Hot, sticky, and slow.

  Peppa had night duties, which mostly involved pretending to fix things while eavesdropping on the neighbors through hacked radio signals. That’s when she saw her.

  Bug.

  A small, sharp-looking kid in an oversized coat dragging a weird bucket full of wires. Shaved-ish pixie cut, messy, defiant eyes, and walking like she knew exactly where she was going, even if she didn’t.

  Peppa narrowed her eyes. “The hell…?”

  Bug noticed her, but didn’t flinch. Just stared. Then said: “Your well’s haunted.”

  Peppa paused. “I know.”

  “Cool.”

  That’s how they met.

  By morning, half the town was murmuring about Daisy’s VHS shack. Again.

  “She’s doing that card thing again,” said Soup Can Sally.

  “Her dad lost the generator in a bet,” said Buggy Jim.

  Inside the shack, Daisy shuffled her glittering tarot deck lazily, then pulled a VHS tape labeled "Return of the Living Dead 2?" and handed it to a nine-year-old in exchange for a button and a half-smoked cigarette.

  “You get what fate wants,” Daisy said, her fox curling at her feet.

  Behind her sunglasses, she barely blinked. “And fate really loves zombie sequels.”

  Peppa didn’t trust Daisy, but she liked her style.

  At least until Daisy muttered something strange that evening, holding a card no one had seen before.

  “Storm’s coming,” she said. “But it ain’t rain.”

  That night, Peppa filmed her siblings from behind a busted camcorder she’d soldered to life. Her drawings were taped across the walls, messy and emotional — stick figures with giant heads, exaggerated expressions, and captions like: "Mason being annoying again." "Alex tired of all our crap."

  She whispered to the camera: “I used to live somewhere else. Before the desert. Before Clyde. My mom called me her little engineer. My dad didn’t call me anything.”

  She paused, picked at a bolt in her palm. “Anyway. Whatever. Not trauma dumping. This is... just for documentation.”

  She shut the camera off.

  And outside, something buzzed near the well.