Time Doesn't Work Here

“The clocks didn’t agree, the birds didn’t sing, and Mum stared at the toilet block like it owed her something.”

We pulled into the rest stop around lunchtime, though I wasn’t sure what time it actually was. The clock on the dashboard blinked 12:41, but Mum’s phone said 1:03, and the two seemed locked in silent disagreement, each refusing to concede to the other. It felt strangely appropriate—nothing on this journey matched up, not the clocks, not the maps, not even the weather. The sun offered no guidance, hanging motionless in the thin winter sky, too high for morning, too cold for afternoon, like it couldn’t be bothered tracking the hours anymore. Just there. Watching.

The rest stop was little more than a dusty shrug of land beside the road—no signs, no welcome, just a space that looked like it had been begrudgingly cleared by someone with a bulldozer and a deadline. The gravel was uneven and loose, giving way under the tyres with a crunch that set my teeth on edge. A couple of tyre tracks led in and back out again, like ghosts of other people who hadn’t stayed long.

There was a toilet block, squat and grey, like a bunker that had been forgotten during some distant war. Rust had leaked down from the bolts on the roof, brown streaks staining the concrete walls like tears that never got wiped away. Names and initials were scratched into the outer wall—some carved deep with knives, others just finger-dragged through years of grime. I spotted one in particular: T & M, 2014, circled in a shaky heart. I wondered if they were still together, wherever they were now, or if the dust had claimed them too.

A bench sat under a spindly tree that didn’t seem to know if it was alive or not—half its branches leafless, the others holding onto brittle yellow leaves like they didn’t know when to let go. The bench itself was green once, probably. The paint had peeled away in long curls, revealing dull, pitted metal beneath. A rusted tap jutted out from the side of a corrugated shelter, dripping slowly into a dented metal trough as if mourning its own uselessness.

Mum didn’t say anything when the car rolled to a stop. She just turned off the ignition and let her hands fall, still resting on the steering wheel. Her fingers stayed curled there, unmoving, like they’d fused to the rubber after hours of clinging on too tightly. She didn’t blink. Just stared straight ahead, not at the shelter or the bench or even the distant, shimmering horizon, but at the toilet block—as if it might offer something other than what it was. A secret. A way out. An answer.

Her lips were pulled tight, nearly colourless, and there were faint marks on her cheeks from the way she’d been grinding her teeth. I watched her chest rise and fall slowly, each breath shallow, too careful. It was the kind of breathing you did when you were trying not to cry but weren’t quite sure why.

Mack undid his seatbelt in a single, deliberate motion, and pushed his door open with a creak that echoed louder than it should have. He didn’t ask. Didn’t look back. Just stepped out into the light like he needed space more than air.

I followed, fumbling with my own belt, the webbing dragging across my jumper and making that rasping sound I’d always found oddly sad. The moment I opened the door, cold air rushed in, sharp and metallic on my tongue, full of dust and eucalyptus and that faint dry scent that always reminded me of old paper and chalkboards.

My legs prickled with pins and needles as I stood, the feeling fizzing up my calves after too long folded in the same position. The gravel shifted underfoot as I stepped away from the car, crunching like bones, and I pulled Ribbons from the seat beside me before Mum could shut the door and trap her inside.

The silence out here felt thicker than it had in the car. Heavier. Like it had grown denser the further we drove from whatever version of normal we used to know. Even the birds were quiet, or maybe there just weren’t any. No wind. No insects. Just the occasional pop of the cooling engine and the sound of our shoes scraping across the dirt.

I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing. Resting? Waiting? Resetting? The place didn’t invite any of it. But we stood there anyway, breathing the silence, surrounded by a world that didn’t seem to need us.

I pulled my jumper tighter around me, folding my arms until the wool scratched at the bare skin of my elbows, but it helped a bit. The breeze wasn’t strong, just persistent—dry fingers running over my face and down my neck, lifting my hair briefly before letting it fall again. It made my ears ache.

Dust clung to the tyres, coating them in a soft red fuzz that looked almost velvet from certain angles. As I stepped away from the car, it lifted gently around my feet, stirred into lazy spirals by my movement, catching glints of sunlight in each tiny grain. For a moment it was almost beautiful—suspended there, swirling like thoughts too light to settle—then it sank again, vanishing into the earth without ceremony. My trainers left neat prints in the dirt, their treads crisp and perfect for a second before the breeze whispered over them and made them blur, soften, disappear. Like I’d never been there at all.

High above, a wedge-tailed eagle circled slowly, its wings stretched wide, riding the invisible currents that we couldn’t see or understand. It didn’t flap, didn’t need to. It just turned and turned, tracing lazy, patient spirals, the only thing moving in the whole sky. It looked like it had all the time in the world. Like it had seen this rest stop a hundred times before and hadn’t been impressed.

Ribbons dangled from my arm as I walked towards the bench, her head bouncing lightly against my hip with each step. I clutched her tighter when a breeze passed—just in case. She was warm from the car, and her worn fabric felt oddly grounding, like she remembered who I was even if I didn’t always.

My legs protested with every step, stiff and sore from too long folded in the back seat. I stretched them cautiously, trying not to wince. The backs of my knees were sticky, the kind of discomfort that made you wriggle constantly without knowing why, and my socks had bunched up under my toes, making each footstep feel slightly off-centre. I tried to fix them without taking off my shoes, shifting my heels inside my trainers and flexing my toes, but it didn’t help much.

Mack didn’t speak. He went straight for the tap, his stride direct, efficient, like he’d already made a list in his head of everything that needed doing and this was item number one. The tap let out a screech as he turned it—one of those horrible, metallic whines that made your jaw clench and your ears pull back involuntarily. The kind of sound that felt too big for the space it came from. Then, water. A sudden, strong gush that hit the concrete with a splatter loud enough to echo.

He rinsed out the two bottles from Mum’s bag, upending them one at a time, watching the last stale drops run out onto the ground. Then he filled them again, crouching slightly so he could steady each bottle under the stream. The water looked clean, surprisingly so, considering how ancient the infrastructure around it appeared. He held each bottle up to the light, checking the seals and lids like a proper mechanic. Tapped the sides. Adjusted the caps. Opened them again and resealed them with careful, twisting hands.

It felt like more than just filling water. It felt like a ritual. Like he was preparing for something more serious than another stretch of road. Maybe he was. His face was set with the same quiet focus he got when he was building something, that look that meant don’t interrupt me right now—I’m trying to get this right. Every movement deliberate. No wasted energy.

Something about it made me feel both safer and sadder. Like he’d taken responsibility for all of us without anyone asking.

And I didn’t know how to help.

Mum stayed in the car.

The engine was off, but the driver’s door hung open, her left leg resting on the gravel, foot flat, toes twitching now and then like she couldn’t quite decide whether to step out or pull it back in. She looked half-unmoored, as if she’d parked her body but not made the final decision to arrive.

Her phone sat in one hand, the other wrapped around her stomach like she was trying to hold something in—or maybe keep something out. Every few seconds, her thumb tapped the screen with a kind of hopeless determination, a rhythm both anxious and robotic. Tap. Wait. Tap again.

I sat down on the bench, the old wood creaking slightly beneath my weight. My legs dangled off the edge, not quite reaching the ground. Ribbons sat beside me, propped up on the slatted wood, legs splayed awkwardly, her head forever tilted in that optimistic, inquisitive way—like she was listening, even if she didn’t have ears that could really hear. One of her button eyes caught the light and glinted like it was winking.

She was unchanged. That was what I loved about her. She didn’t sigh, didn’t snap, didn’t vanish into her phone or say not now. She was steady. Even when the world was full of detours and silences and people who didn’t explain anything.

My stomach growled, a long, slow protest that felt like it came from somewhere deeper than just hunger. It sounded loud out here, too loud—like it didn’t know how to be polite. But it wasn’t the kind of hungry that felt urgent anymore. Not sharp, not painful. Just empty. Like something had been scooped out and not replaced. Like a space that echoed.

I looked down at my shoes, kicking the tips of my toes gently against the gravel. Dust puffed around them, the tiny red clouds dissipating almost as soon as they formed. I didn’t ask about lunch.

It didn’t seem like a good idea.

The air around Mum was the kind of quiet that warned you off. Not sad. Not angry. Just shut. Like a room with the door closed and the light off. Her face was turned slightly away, so I could only see the line of her jaw, tight and unmoving, and her hand still holding the phone as if she was waiting for it to bring her back to whatever place she’d left behind.

Mack hadn’t spoken either. He was over by the car now, checking the tyres like a mechanic, or maybe just giving himself a reason to keep moving. His silence matched hers. And mine. All three of us, orbiting each other without collision, without contact, the way you do when everyone’s holding their breath at the same time.

We stayed like that for a while. The sun overhead. The dust around our feet. The silence between us growing a little taller with every passing minute.

I looked up, studying the landscape that surrounded our small oasis of concrete and metal.

The trees stood like guardians, mostly gums—lean, tall, and hardened by years of wind and drought. Their trunks bore scars, bark hanging in long, curling strips that flapped gently when the breeze stirred, like forgotten ribbons on an old scarecrow. The peeling reminded me of sunburnt skin, dry and reluctant to let go. Some of them leaned ever so slightly, as if they’d grown tired of holding themselves upright but hadn’t yet given in.

A magpie hopped between two nearby trees, its feathers impossibly clean in this dusty world, the black almost blue in the light, the white so sharp it looked painted on. It moved with a kind of casual authority, head tilting in sharp, jerky motions, beak snapping once at something invisible in the grass. It stared at me then—really stared—its one glossy eye catching the light, unblinking, as if assessing my purpose here. It made no sound. Just gave me that long, calculating look before lifting off in a flurry of wings and vanishing into the scrub without even rustling the leaves.

It belonged here. That was what struck me. It knew how to live in this world, how to find food and shade and whatever else it needed to survive. Its confidence made me feel even more like an intruder. A child with a stuffed toy, stranded in a place that barely noticed we existed.

Mack came over not long after, his footsteps crunching softly on the gravel. He didn’t say anything at first, just sat down next to me with a sigh that sounded too old for someone his age. The bench groaned under his weight, the metal frame shifting slightly, and he carefully handed me one of the water bottles, like he was passing over something fragile or sacred.

I took it with both hands. Drank too quickly. The water was surprisingly cold, hitting my throat with a chill that made me cough a little, sending a small splash down my chin and onto the collar of my jumper. I wiped it away with my sleeve, embarrassed, but Mack didn’t tease me. He just looked away, giving me that small, quiet kindness that didn’t need words to be understood.

It tasted fine. Not sweet, not rusty. Just… clean. The way water should be, I supposed. Not from a tank or a cracked old plastic bottle. Just plain and cold, with the faintest hint of something metallic—like the memory of pipes, but not enough to matter.

I looked over at him. His face was turned towards the trees, but I could tell he was still watching Mum out of the corner of his eye, the way you watch something you don’t trust not to break. His expression didn’t give much away, but his jaw was tight again, and he’d started pulling at the loose threads on the sleeve of his hoodie.

We sat there like that for a while. Just breathing the dry air and watching the wind stir the red dust in lazy spirals, not talking, not moving too much, because sometimes stillness is the only way to hold things together.

Mum finally got out of the car, her movements stiff, like she was operating her limbs one at a time, each joint needing to be convinced to cooperate. She paused beside the open door for a moment, as if orienting herself to the light and space, then made her way to the boot. The lid lifted with a dull thunk.

She leaned in to rummage through whatever bags or boxes were still back there, the shuffle of fabric and plastic the only sound besides the occasional rustle of wind through dry leaves. Dust clung to her shoes as she walked back to us, sticking to the edges of the soles and creeping up onto the leather like it belonged there, as if the land itself was trying to claim her too.

“This’ll tide us over,” she said.

Her voice was low, not tired exactly—more hollow, like it had travelled a long way just to make it out of her throat. She carried a crumpled plastic shopping bag and handed it to Mack with a kind of awkward dignity, the way people sometimes offer bad news—respectfully, but with the knowledge that it won't be well received.

The plastic crackled in the air, sharp and dry. Mum didn’t wait to see what we made of it. She just stood there, arms folded now, eyes scanning the horizon like she was expecting something to emerge from it. Or maybe she was just avoiding our expressions.

Inside the bag were two muesli bars, both flattened at one end, their wrappers slightly sticky where something sugary had leaked at some point and dried. There was also half a packet of dry biscuits—cracked and crumbling at the corners, the kind that came in rectangles and always promised ‘wholegrain goodness’ but delivered mostly dust. The kind of food that tasted more like the idea of eating than the real thing.

Mack didn’t say thank you. He just gave her a quiet nod, a single downward motion of his chin, respectful but restrained. He opened the packet slowly, carefully, as if he were performing a task with consequences. The plastic split with a soft tear, crumbs already drifting into the folds of his jumper.

He handed me a biscuit without speaking, then unwrapped one of the muesli bars and held it out in my direction, the gesture gentle, like he was offering a truce. Or a tiny bit of hope.

I took it, trying not to snatch it even though my stomach tightened in anticipation. It wasn’t hunger that growled anymore—it was something quieter, more enduring. A hollowness that didn’t demand so much as persist.

The wrapper made a thin, papery crackle as I peeled it back, revealing the dense bar of oats and raisins, the fruit shrivelled like tiny question marks pressed into a block of chewy grains. It smelled faintly sweet, almost nostalgic, the kind of scent that made you think of school lunches and less complicated days. It probably wouldn’t taste as good as I remembered, but I didn’t care.

Not right now.

Not here.

Mum sat on the edge of the bench, one foot anchored on the gravel, the other twitching slightly as if unsure whether to stay grounded or flee. She held the water bottle loosely in both hands, fingers wrapped tight around the middle like she might squeeze something solid out of it if she just held on hard enough. She didn’t drink. Didn’t even unscrew the cap. Just sat there, staring out across the dry grass and dirt, her bottle beaded with condensation that caught the light and threw it back in pinpricks of colour—like the bottle was trying harder to sparkle than she was.

It reminded me of something a teacher once said about prisms, about how light could bend and break apart and still come back beautiful. But the droplets on Mum’s bottle didn’t feel beautiful. They felt like tears waiting to happen.

Mack glanced sideways at her, a flicker of movement more instinct than curiosity. He didn't turn his head. Just shifted his eyes in that practiced way of his, the way you do when you're trying to study someone without letting them know you are. I saw the way his gaze flicked down—first to her hands, then to her shoulders, the set of her jaw—taking a mental inventory of all the micro-expressions and postures he’d spent the last few days becoming an expert at interpreting.

He returned to his lap, brushing a few biscuit crumbs onto the dirt with the back of his hand.

“You didn’t bring the eski?” he asked.

He said it casually, like he was just making conversation, but there was something under the words. A suggestion. A quiet accusation tucked into the corners, barely audible but very much there. It was the kind of question that didn't need a sharp tone to land heavily.

Mum didn’t answer straight away.

Then she sighed. It wasn't just air leaving her lungs—it was energy, too. Her whole body slumped with it, shoulders sagging like the breath had taken the scaffolding with it. She pressed her fingers to her temples with a kind of desperation, grinding small, slow circles as if she could massage the answer into shape.

“It wasn’t safe to bring too much,” she said at last, voice flat.

That word—safe—landed with a quiet thud in the space between us. A loaded word. A word that had stopped meaning what it used to. I felt it, somewhere below my ribs, a little twist like the air inside me had turned wrong. Safety used to mean seatbelts and sunscreen and Mum checking under the bed for monsters. Now it meant... this. Abandoning food. Leaving behind cold things and maps and normality. Driving without knowing where we were going. Not because we were on an adventure, but because the alternative was worse.

Mack’s jaw slowed. He chewed like he was thinking about something else entirely. Then he swallowed and didn’t say another word. But his silence was different now. Sharper at the edges. Not angry, but... aware. A silence that held opinions.

He didn’t believe her. I could see it in the line of his brow, the way his eyes lingered on her for a beat too long. The kind of stare you give when you’re starting to realise the story doesn’t match the evidence.

Mum leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, water bottle still clenched in one hand. Her other hand slid up into her hair, fingers spreading and digging gently into her scalp like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid inside her own head. She stayed like that for a while—folded in on herself, shoulders hunched inward until they almost met, like she was trying to take up less space. Like the weight of her own thoughts was pulling her inward, shrinking her down.

And just for a second, she didn’t look like our mother.

She looked like a woman who had run out of options.

The three of us sat like that for a while, arranged in a triangle of silence, each point turned inward. No one talking. Just the wind scraping across the gravel in a low, rasping hiss, a sound like sandpaper drawn over bone, and somewhere out of sight the far-off whine of a truck engine, rising and falling as it moved through the landscape like a ghost we could hear but never see. It passed us by without slowing, another traveller with somewhere to be, someone else’s journey intersecting ours only in sound, then gone.

A dust devil spun into existence near the edge of the clearing, no taller than Mack, twisting up leaves and twigs and a scrap of white paper that danced for a moment before fluttering to the ground. It twirled with sudden ferocity, a little storm born of nothing, then collapsed in on itself, leaving only scuffed earth and an unsettled patch of air. The disturbed dust shimmered briefly, then settled back into place as if nothing had happened.

I finished my biscuit, swallowing the last dry mouthful with effort. The crumbs caught in my throat, clinging like sand to skin, despite the water I'd drunk. I brushed the fragments off my lap, watching as they disappeared into the red dirt, where ants or birds or the wind itself would claim them. The final act of eating felt less like nourishment and more like a routine, something done because we still could, not because it made anything better.

“Mum?” I said softly, the word thin and uncertain, barely more than breath. I didn't really expect a response. It was the kind of word you send out like a line into the dark, hoping something might tug on the other end.

She didn’t look up. Her head remained in her hands, elbows braced on her knees, as if she thought pressing her palms against her eyes might hold the whole world at bay. Her shoulders rose and fell slowly. That was all.

“Are we gonna have dinner later?”

It slipped out before I could stop it, the kind of question that comes from habit more than hope. A question I might have asked a hundred times before this trip, when days had structure and meals came at predictable intervals and Mum didn’t look like she was being slowly erased by whatever it was she wasn’t telling us.

There was no answer. Just the wind. And the trees around us creaking softly in the breeze, like they were exchanging secrets in a language we couldn’t understand.

Mack nudged me with his elbow—gentle, but firm. A signal.

“Not now, Rose.”

It wasn’t a telling-off. Not really. More a reminder. That now wasn’t the time. That some questions were too heavy, even when they seemed small. That we had to choose our moments, and this one was already full to the brim with unsaid things.

I nodded, just once, and didn't say anything else.

Instead, I folded the muesli bar wrapper into a neat little triangle. The plastic crackled as I worked, each crease a quiet protest against the silence. I tucked it into the empty shopping bag with exaggerated care, as though being tidy could somehow restore order to the world unravelling around us. It felt important, that small act—an anchor in a sea of shifting unknowns.

Ribbons sat on the bench beside me, her head tilted permanently to one side, stitched in place with thread that had come loose at the corner.

A willy wagtail darted across the clearing, its flight sharp and erratic, tail feathers fanned like a dancer mid-spin. It chirped once—sharp, piercing—and then again, louder this time, as if demanding we take notice. It landed briefly on the corner of the bench, head cocked, eyes bright with curiosity, and for a second, it looked right at Mum.

She lifted her head—not fully, just enough to follow it with her gaze. For that brief moment, her expression softened. Something flickered behind her eyes. Longing, maybe. Or envy. Or memory.

The bird flitted away again, vanishing into the gum trees as swiftly as it had come, leaving a hole in the sky behind it.

Mum’s eyes dropped once more. Her hands returned to her face.

And the silence settled back in like dust, thin and weightless but inescapable.

After a while, Mack stood and walked to the edge of the rest area, his footsteps crunching across gravel until they softened into the muffled sound of boots pressing against dry earth. The noise faded gradually, swallowed by the vastness around us, until there was only the wind again—restless and quiet, brushing against the leaves like a whisper too faint to understand.

He stopped just before the scrub began, where the open dirt gave way to spinifex and spindly bushes that bristled like defensive creatures. The spinifex clung to the earth in isolated clumps, each one separate, as if the grass didn't trust the others enough to grow close. The bushes, too, stood alone—gnarled and hunched, with branches that curled like clenched fists, caught mid-struggle with an invisible force. Nothing moved. Not a bird, not an insect, not even the dust. It felt like the world had paused, holding its breath with us.

Mack didn’t move either. He just stood there, hands buried in his hoodie pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, his figure outlined by the endless stretch of sky behind him. Blue and white and empty. A boy dwarfed by landscape, shaped by worry. His posture made me ache, though I couldn’t have said why—maybe because he looked older from behind, like someone who’d been made to grow up too quickly, or maybe because I could almost see the weight he carried, invisible but heavy, pressing down on him like an extra gravity.

I wondered what he saw out there, in that harsh and endless space. Whether he was looking for something or just trying to imagine what might lie beyond the horizon. Whether he was planning or just pretending. I tried to guess what was ticking behind his eyes—escape routes, weather patterns, petrol estimates, contingency plans we wouldn’t understand. All of it, maybe. None of it. Just silence and dry air and the constant pressure of not knowing.

When he turned and walked back, he didn’t speak straight away. He stood beside the bench instead, looking down at Mum and me. There was something in his face I couldn’t quite interpret—tiredness, maybe. Or decision.

“We should go,” he said.

The words weren’t sharp, but they cut through the stillness anyway. He said it with quiet certainty, like it wasn’t a suggestion. Not a plea. Not a request. It was something he'd decided on, alone, and was now simply informing us.

Mum blinked like someone surfacing from deep water. Her hands dropped from her hair slowly, and for a moment, she looked around in that unfocused way people do when they’ve forgotten where they are. Then she stood, bones and joints creaking audibly as if reluctant to resume motion, and brushed her hands down her thighs, leaving pale handprints in the red dust. She did it almost absently, like she was reminding herself how to use her body again.

She took the water bottles from beside the bench, turning them once in her hands, checking the seals as if they might’ve failed in the past few minutes. Then she zipped them into the side pouch of her worn canvas bag. Her nod, when it came, was small. Barely there. But it was enough.

No one asked what the plan was.

No one asked where we were going.

We just moved.

Back into the car, into the familiar creak of seatbelts and the static crackle of fabric rubbing against plastic. The air inside had gone stale again, thick with the scent of ourselves—sweat and dust and nerves.

Mum turned the key.

The engine spluttered on the first try, then caught on the second, juddering to life with a deep vibration that settled into the seat beneath me, travelling through my spine and into my ribs like a heartbeat I didn’t quite trust anymore. It was a tired sound. A sound that might not last forever.

We pulled away.

The tyres crunched over gravel, sending small puffs of dust spinning outward from our wheels, and then we were back on the road—if you could call it that. A stretch of cracked bitumen and packed dirt winding ahead through scrub and silence, leading us forward without promise or explanation.

I twisted in my seat to look out the back window.

The bench, the tap, the toilet block—they were already shrinking, already fading into the bush, the metal shelter losing its shape against the silver-green of the gums. Another fragment of the world slipping into the past, unmarked and unmourned, like a stage set after the play is over.

They looked like they’d never been real at all.

Just scenery.

Just something we passed through on our way to somewhere else.