Promise

“Sometimes a promise isn’t for the person you give it to—it’s for the space between you, so you both don’t fall in.”

We went back inside.

The shift from the vast openness of the star-drenched night into the stuffy, dim interior of Room Four felt almost violent—like walking from a cathedral into a cupboard. The air inside pressed in from all sides, thick with warmth that wasn’t comforting, just stale. It smelt of sleep and secrets, of too many lives passing briefly through one small space and leaving echoes behind. The yellow bulb above buzzed softly, casting a sallow light over everything and making the shadows in the corners look deeper, more suspicious, like they were hiding something.

It was as if the room had changed while we’d been gone—grown heavier, more claustrophobic. The silence felt denser, like the walls had absorbed the weight of night and were slowly leaking it back into the air. My skin, tingling from the cold, prickled now in the heat, and I couldn’t decide whether I was too warm or still freezing inside.

Mum hadn’t moved.

She was curled on her side, knees drawn up tightly like she was trying to make herself smaller, to retreat into herself. The bed sagged beneath her in the middle, her weight bending it into a shape that didn’t look comfortable. Her coat was still zipped all the way up to her chin, twisted awkwardly around her frame, and one boot was dangling off the end of her foot, like even her shoes had grown tired of trying to stay on. The other lay where it had landed hours ago, abandoned, half lost in the shadows beside the bed.

There was a hole in the toe of her sock. Just a tiny patch of bare skin poking through like a secret she hadn’t meant anyone to see. It made her seem even more human. Even more fragile.

Her fingers twitched. A small, jerky motion that broke the stillness for only a second. Then she mumbled—just a soft, almost breathless stream of words, too low and slurred to make sense of. I leaned forward without realising it, listening hard, hoping for a clue to what she was dreaming about, who she might be speaking to behind her closed eyelids. But there was nothing coherent—just the soft rhythm of a private battle being fought in silence, words from a different world that we weren’t allowed to enter.

Mack didn’t speak. He simply moved to the other bed and lay down stiffly, his every movement careful and quiet, like any sudden noise might tip the balance in the room and undo what little calm had been scraped together. His arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable in the jaundiced glow of the single bulb.

One corner of his blanket had slipped off, exposing a stained patch of mattress underneath—an irregular bloom of something that might have been coffee or something worse. He didn’t fix it. Just lay there, staring at the ceiling, the yellow light catching the side of his face and making him look older than ten. Far too old.

I climbed into my bed slowly, careful not to let the springs squeal too loudly. Ribbons was waiting, soft and familiar beneath my arm, her fur cool from the night but quickly warming against my side. The blanket scratched my skin as I pulled it over me, coarse and too thin, but I welcomed it anyway—some barrier, however inadequate, between me and the cold that crept in under the door and through the cracks in the wall.

My toes were like stones, numb from the time outside. It took several minutes before I felt even the faintest tingle of returning warmth, and even then it was the kind that hurt, like pins under the skin. I curled tighter, pulling my knees toward my chest, and tried to imagine I was somewhere else. Not a motel in the middle of nowhere. Not here.

The heater in the corner clunked on again, a mechanical groan followed by the familiar dry tick-tick of metal expanding. Then came the smell—burnt dust, like something old being reheated. The warmth it gave was patchy, a narrow radius of heat that never quite reached our beds unless we angled our bodies just right. Still, it was something.

I stared at the ceiling. At the crack I hadn’t noticed before.

It curved across the plaster like a riverbed—dry, jagged, meaningless. Not like the Milky Way we’d looked at earlier, all graceful light and distant wonder. This crack was tired. Ugly. Like the room itself was slowly coming apart at the seams.

I traced its shape with my eyes, again and again, until I knew every twist of it. And I wondered—had it always been there? Had someone else once lain on this bed and stared at it too, measuring its growth over the hours or days they were stuck here? Did it widen in the heat, narrow in the cold? Would it split one day, suddenly and finally, letting the sky pour in?

I didn’t know.

But I couldn’t stop looking.

And I couldn’t stop wondering what tomorrow would look like when morning finally came.

I rolled onto my side to face Mack, the bed springs creaking in protest—thin, metallic sounds that felt disproportionately loud in the hush of the room. The mattress shifted beneath me, and the blanket tugged at my shoulder, heavy and scratchy against my neck.

Mack was still awake. I could tell by the way his eyes caught the faint light—unblinking, distant, staring at a fixed point somewhere above or beyond the ceiling. Not focused. Not really seeing. Just looking. His chest rose and fell in a slow, measured rhythm, the kind of breathing you did when you were trying hard to stay calm. Like if you could just control your breath, you might be able to control everything else as well.

“When do we get to Brisbane?” I whispered. The question felt old already, worn down from being carried too long without an answer. But still it came—like a reflex, like a litany. Like maybe if I kept asking, it would somehow bring Brisbane closer, shape it into something real.

He didn’t answer straight away. I could almost see him weighing it—whatever scraps of knowledge or hope he had—shuffling them around in his head like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. Then: “Soon.”

“Promise?” I asked, the word escaping before I had the chance to doubt it. It wasn’t just a request—it was a plea. A thin thread I was hoping he could tie around us to keep us from drifting any further apart.

There was a pause. Long enough that the heater clicked back on again and the air took on that dry, scorched smell. Mum mumbled something in her sleep—more of those indistinct sounds that stirred the room without illuminating anything. Somewhere outside, a truck passed, its low engine hum trailing off into the distance.

Then Mack said it: “Yeah. I promise.”

But I heard the lie. Or maybe not a lie, exactly—more like a hope dressed up as certainty. He meant well. He wanted to believe it himself. But his voice betrayed him, just a fraction of hesitation, the kind of tremor you might miss if you weren’t listening for it. But I was. I always was now.

Still, I didn’t challenge it. It was better than silence. Better than saying the thing we both feared: that Brisbane might be just a word now, not a place. That our path didn’t really lead anywhere except further away from whatever life we’d left behind.