Run Quiet, Run Fast

“It wasn’t a game, but I pretended it was—because spies don’t cry, and I didn’t want Mack to see.”

When Grandma opened the sewing room door, her face was different.

Not angry, not scared — just tight. Like a balloon pulled too far but not popped yet. The skin around her eyes was pale, almost translucent, and her lips had lost all colour.

Her voice came out in a hiss, barely more than breath. “Shoes on. Now. Don't talk. Don't stop.”

Mack didn't wait. He'd already slung his backpack over his shoulders and was tying his laces with fast, jerky fingers.

I fumbled with mine — one of the loops wouldn't go through, and I started to panic. My fingers felt fat and useless, like sausages trying to thread a needle. The more I tried, the worse it got. I could feel tears building behind my eyes, hot and desperate. Grandma crouched beside me and tied the knot in two quick tugs. Her hands were steady even though her breathing wasn't.

She looked me right in the eye.

“Quiet now, Rosie-girl. This is just a little adventure. You stay close to your brother, alright?”

I nodded, but my throat was full. Full of questions and fears and words I couldn't shape. I couldn't even say yes. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, clumsy and dry.

She led us down the hallway, past the bathroom with its dripping tap, past the laundry where Grandpa's pyjamas still hung damp on the indoor line.

She paused at the back door, which creaked when she opened it a crack. It always did—Grandpa had been meaning to oil the hinges for months. The outside light was pale, the sort that makes everything look like it's been dusted with flour. A winter sun without warmth, just brightness that revealed without comforting.

We slipped out one by one — Grandma first, then Mack, then me. The wooden step was cold beneath my shoes. A magpie warbled somewhere nearby, oblivious to our escape, singing about territories and breakfast as if nothing unusual was happening.

The wind caught the door slightly, and she caught it mid-swing, her hand shooting out with startling quickness. She closed it with the slowest, softest click I'd ever heard. Like putting a baby to sleep. Like keeping a secret.

We were in the garden now. The little one out the back, where the weeds always grew faster than the flowers. Where the birdbath always had more leaves than water. The bottlebrush dropped red bristles onto the path like tiny warning flags. A half-deflated football lay abandoned by the fence, leftover from some long-ago game.

Grandma didn't take the path. She led us round the back of the shed, where the bins were kept — the big green one and the smaller red one with the cracked lid. The plastic smelled sour in the morning air, a mixture of old food and bleach. We crouched behind them. Mack ducked low and pulled me down with him. My legs scraped against the rough brick wall. I didn't care. The pain felt distant, belonging to another world where scraped knees mattered.

“Wait here,” Grandma breathed. “Not a sound.”

Her eyes darted toward the house, calculating, measuring. She squeezed my shoulder once, a brief pressure that said everything words couldn't. Then she was gone, moving with a quickness I'd never associated with grandmothers before.

She crept back toward the house, slipping through the back door without a sound. A few seconds passed—just enough to make it seem real—then her voice rang out, clear and purposeful, aimed toward the front of the house:

“I'll just check the back room for his papers!” she said. “Give me another minute!”

It wasn't shouted, but it carried—pitched perfectly to reach the ears of anyone waiting by the front door. Not enough to alarm. Just enough to reassure.

Her voice was different now—louder, false-cheerful, like an actress playing a role. The transformation was so complete it was almost frightening.

The voices outside stirred in response, but we couldn't make out the words. A low murmur, like bees in a distant hive. It was enough. The distraction worked.

Mack's breathing was shallow beside me, his chest barely moving. His eyes never left Grandma's figure. I could feel his heart hammering where our arms pressed together, a rapid thump-thump-thump like a small animal trying to escape.

Grandma came back fast, her arms tense, her mouth a straight line. A strand of hair had escaped her clip, flying wild in the wind like a banner.

“Come on.”

We followed her around the side of the house, skirting the fence-line, where the ground dipped and the bins had left long trails in the dirt from years of being dragged to the kerb. My shoes crunched pebbles. I tried to lift my feet higher so they wouldn't make noise. Each step felt enormous, as if the smallest sound might shatter the world.

Mack looked over his shoulder every few seconds, one hand gripping the strap of his bag so tight I thought it might snap. His knuckles were white with strain. He kept whispering, “Stay low, stay low,” like we were in a spy movie, but his voice trembled. Not like a game anymore. Like survival.

At one point, we stopped dead — footsteps on the gravel from inside the yard. The sound froze us in place, three statues caught in an impossible moment. For a heartbeat, I thought someone had seen us. My lungs refused to work, holding air that had suddenly turned to concrete.

But it passed.

Only the wind moved, stirring dead leaves along the fence line. They skittered across the ground with dry, papery whispers, like secrets being traded.

Grandma reached the side gate and opened it with slow hands, careful not to let it creak. The rusty latch protested slightly, a tiny squeal of metal against metal that sounded like a scream in the tense silence. She winced but kept going, easing it open just enough for us to slip through.

I held Ribbons tighter to my chest. She wasn't helping. She was just fabric and stuffing and a silly pink ribbon. But I clung to her like she might know what was going on. Like she might have answers when none of the grown-ups did. Her one glass eye caught the light, reflecting nothing.

We stepped out onto the side drive.

Beyond the safety of the yard the street stretched before us, empty and exposed. Houses sat silent behind closed curtains. No children playing. No neighbours chatting over fences. Just stillness, waiting.

And then we ran.

Not sprinting, not shouting—that would draw attention. We ran with purpose, with control. Mack's hand found mine, gripping tightly as we moved. Grandma led the way, her cardigan flapping behind her like wings.

Behind us, grandma’s home grew smaller with each step. I didn't look back after the first glance. I couldn't bear to see the testing people's car parked out front, couldn't bear to think of Grandpa alone in his chair, waiting for strangers to take him away.

So I ran.

Toward what, I didn't know.

Away from what, I was too afraid to understand.

Grandma's car was parked two houses down, on the side of the road under a droopy gumtree with strips of bark hanging like streamers. Long ribbons of grey-brown peeled away from the trunk, curling in the wind like abandoned gift wrap.

We raced toward it, shoes thudding on the bitumen, backpacks bouncing against our spines with each hurried step. The morning air was sharp in my lungs, too cold, too thin, like it wasn't meant for running. My breath came in little clouds that vanished as quickly as they formed.

I tried to think it was a game.

A weird one, sure. But still a game.

Maybe we were on a treasure hunt. Maybe there were bad guys, like in the books Mack read where children always outsmarted grown-ups. Maybe we were spies on a secret mission. Maybe this was just one of those strange things adults did sometimes that never made sense until later, like when Mum took us to the dentist without warning or when Dad suddenly needed us to be quiet because of “important phone calls.”

Maybe this was the part where we'd get to the magic door and everything would be fine. The hidden portal that leads to the secret kingdom where problems disappear and grandpas don't get sick and strangers don't come knocking with machines that beep.

I almost believed it.

Until the bang.

It happened just as Grandma shut the driver's door. The metal frame clunked shut with a sound of safety, of escape almost achieved.

Then came a sound from the house.

Loud. Sharp. Final.

Not like a door. Not like a sneeze. Not even like a slammed window. None of the ordinary sounds that houses make when people move through them.

It cracked through the air like a whip made of thunder. Like the world tearing in half. It seemed to echo off the silent houses, bouncing between the tin roofs and empty yards.

Bang.

I screamed before I even knew I had. The sound ripped from my throat, raw and instinctive as the cry of a startled bird. Ribbons tumbled from my arms to the floor of the ute, forgotten in the sudden terror.

Mack flinched so hard he hit his elbow on the window. The thud of bone against glass made a dull counterpoint to the terrible echo still hanging in the air. His face had gone the colour of paper, his freckles standing out like spots of rust.

He turned to Grandma. “Was that… was that a gun?”

The word hung between us, forbidden and adult and terrifying.

She didn't answer.

Her face didn't change. Not a flicker of surprise or fear or confirmation. Nothing moved except a muscle in her jaw that pulsed once, twice. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tight — too tight — and she pulled the gear stick into drive like she was dragging it through mud. Her knuckles were white, bloodless, as if all the life had retreated to safer places inside her.

“Seatbelts,” she said. Her voice sounded like it had come from somewhere deep underground. Hollow and distant, like it was travelling through stone to reach us.

We buckled up. I was crying now — quietly at first, but the kind where it shakes your chest. Where your lungs seem to hiccup between breaths. The seatbelt clicked into place but felt too tight, cutting across my neck, pressing against my hammering heart. My pulse was in my ears. I could feel it in my neck, in my fingertips, in my temples—everywhere blood could pound and throb. Everything was hot and loud and strange.

Grandma didn't look back.

She didn't check the mirrors.

She just drove.

The tyres spun a little on the bitumen before gripping, and then we were gone — wheels spraying loose gravel behind us like smoke, the house shrinking in the mirror. The engine whined as she accelerated too quickly, the old ute protesting but obeying. A magpie launched itself from a fence post as we passed, startled by our sudden flight.

Mack was staring out the back window, lips pressed together so tightly they'd gone bloodless. His hand gripped the door handle, not to open it but as if he needed something solid to hold onto while the world spun out of control.

I turned too.

The house was still there.

Still the same weatherboard walls, the same red roof, the same drooping gutters that Grandpa kept meaning to fix. The same front yard where I'd built fairy houses from twigs and leaves.

Nothing looked broken.

Nothing looked wrong.

But something was.

I pressed my face against the cool glass, fogging it with my breath. Through the cloudy patch, grandma’s home receded, growing smaller with each second. The testing people's car was still parked out front—a white sedan with an antenna on the roof, ordinary-looking but suddenly sinister. There was no movement on the front step. No figures rushing out. No sign of the bang that had split the morning in two.

“What about Grandpa?” I whispered.

No one answered.

Grandma's eyes stayed on the road, fixed on some point in the distance as if she could see something we couldn't. Her hands didn't move from their rigid ten-and-two position. Her jaw was locked tight, and her shoulders looked like they were trying to hold up something too heavy—the sky, maybe, or the weight of the silence.

I wanted to ask again.

The question burned in my throat like a swallowed coal. I opened my mouth, ready to press for answers.

But the look on her face told me not to.

It was a look I'd never seen before—not on Grandma, not on anyone. A strange mixture of determination and grief, like someone walking into a storm because there's no way around it. Her eyes were dry but red-rimmed, and her mouth was set in a line so straight it looked drawn with a ruler.

Instead, I picked up Ribbons from where she'd fallen. Her one remaining eye stared up at me, glass and unseeing but somehow still a comfort. Brushing off the dust, I hugged her close, burying my face in her worn fur that smelled of home and safety and everything we were leaving behind.