There’s a tide marker on a pylon 25 yards away and the water is slowly rising. That marker’s my clock. Every three inches is about 30 minutes. Nigel has been gone an hour. The thing about tides is unless you live by the sea, you never think about them. In school, I learnt how the moon’s gravity lifts the water on both sides of the earth. It’s weird but it does. I like sun flares, quasars and black holes too. Don’t get me wrong. I like girls and football and I’m all for transexuals and gays. In fact, I thought Nigel was gay but then I found out he was English.

Nigel is my age. Twelve. We’re in the same class but he does advanced maths. He’s small for his age. He makes homemade rockets and bombs and that’s how we connect. Last year we made a bomb using sodium chlorate and sugar which blew old Mrs McCorry’s letterbox to pieces. It also blew out her front windows. Her cat went missing for a week. We designed it on a World War One German hand grenade. You’ve got to hand it to those Germans. We kept a low profile for a month.

Our roaming has taken us a couple of miles from the yacht squadron. It’s in the middle of nowhere. We were walking along a narrow steel pipe that used to connect a pontoon for ships to dock when the oil refinery was running. It’s nine feet off the ground and goes out over the water. The water’s only a foot deep but the tide’s coming in. Nigel’s walking toe to heel and I’m right behind him and he suddenly stops and I lose my balance. For a second I think I’m alright but like a clown, I over-correct and fall on the other side. I hit the water hard with a scream as my left hip lands on a rock. When I move, the pain is so intense, I want to vomit.

“Jesus, I’ll get help”

“Yes”

“Might take a while”

“Not going anywhere”

Nigel sprints through the water and heads over the top of a sand dune and disappears. It’s about 6.00pm. Another hour of daylight. Water is lapping over my cowboy belt buckle. Behind me is scrub and salt pan with tiny bits of plastic flapping on a wire fence. Two rusted 44-gallon drums lie on the beach. One is upright and covered in barnacles and periwinkles. No one is around for miles.

Many problems are solved by parsimony. He has to run to the yacht squadron for help. It’s late Sunday afternoon and people will have gone home. They’ve washed their sails, locked up the boat, had a beer at the bar, taken one last look at their pride and joy, and hit the road. Nigel’s yelling and banging on doors. I told my parents we’d catch the last train home. All he hears is the hollow rattle of spars on the steel masts.

xxxxxxx

I like one girl at the yacht squadron. Ursula is small, blonde and pretty. She plays hockey and has a slight lisp. Her Dad makes wine and the family lives in the hills. I don’t imagine for one minute she has the hots for me. We kissed once and she said she liked cowboy movies. An odd thing to say because cowboy movies are so yesteryear. I figured with all of the faulty logic I could muster, if I bought a cowboy belt that would impress her.

I mowed the lawn every week for a month and stole $10.00 from my mother’s purse. I bought the biggest cowboy belt I could find. The silver buckle alone weighs a pound and the leather was so thick, I spent half an hour forcing it through the loops of my Levi’s. I’ve got the belt on now.

Night has fallen and covered the tide marker. I can’t see the pontoon or 44 gallon drums. What sort of creatures live in the shallows? There are large blue swimmer crabs. Their claws give a nasty nip. I wouldn’t like half a dozen to come in for a feed. There are also blue ring octopus’ but I’d have to be unlucky. The real threat is white pointer sharks. I’ve seen them come in and attack fish in one foot of water. I can see its dead eye rising up from the water, it’s teeth bared and latching on to one of my feet. Sharks are the ringmasters of my multimedia circus, followed closely by psychopaths.

I’ve propped myself up on my elbows. Can’t move much. Every sideways movement from my stomach down is a dagger. The fear got to me for a while and I was yelling my head off. The only sign of life was a cormorant who sat on the pipe and stared at me. If it decided to land on my head and peck my eyes out, there would be nothing I could do. ‘Eyeless boy drowns with bird on his head’. There’s a headline. But the bird is indifferent. It takes a shit and flies off.

The water has covered my yellow t-shirt with Snoopy sitting on his kennel, dressed as a World War One fighter ace. My feet and my hands are trembling. Last year I was camping with Mum and Dad and I fell in to the fire and burnt my hands. Mum put me in the car to take me to hospital. I was shaking. That’s shock. It doesn’t hit you right away.

Crocodiles have eyes on top of their heads. Natural selection and all that. They can hold their breath for a long time, unlike me. I’m seeing the world like a crocodile. My friend Maria used to talk about how crocodiles were eating her alive. We’d known each other since we were nine. She had short brunette hair, blue eyes and long legs. We met at the tennis club. While the adults were inside getting hammered, she hammered me on the court 6-1, 6-0. Maria had a rocket serve and a backhand from hell. I liked her and told her about the circus in my head, which goes like this: ‘if there are other universes, what do they look like? If dogs have feelings, shouldn’t we treat them as friends? What exactly is seven o’clock?’ Yeah, she said, you’re a bit weird but that’s okay. Everyone’s different.

Maria was almost 11 when she got sick. Her Mum rang my Mum and said Maria was having ‘issues’, which meant mental problems. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I crawled through her bedroom window one night and sat on her bed. Crocodiles were eating her alive, she said. I got on my hands and knees and promised I’d clear her bedroom of crocodiles. For the next five minutes, I hurled imaginary crocodile after crocodile out of her window, as she giggled under the covers.

Two weeks later Maria got out of bed wearing her Peter Rabbit pyjamas, walked to the train crossing and walked in front of the east coast express. In the morning, before I knew what happened, I opened an email from her.

“It’s okay to be different, but not too different. I love you”

I never understood what she meant by crocodiles eating her alive, until now. The reptilian part of the brain goes in to overdrive. It’s the terror of primitive man walking alone in the night. It’s me watching the water rise to my chin and knowing death is coming. The terror of extinction. The erasure of the self. Maria’s crocodiles.

I’ve never noticed how slowly the moon rises. I’m saying a little prayer. ‘Please Jesus, not a full moon, not a full moon’. That’s high tide. The fat moon falls on the rusty pipe above me and looks like blood. Am I high enough on the tide line? I can’t tell. I’m an island. I read a poem that no man is an island. I most certainly am an island.

Nigel knows a full moon isn’t good, as he runs through the dark across the salt pans and over sand dunes. I can see him in my mind, running with his elbows tucked in and a stitch knifing his ribs, and the lights of the houses are still far away.

I’ve got about 10 minutes before the water covers my face. My back and neck are arched as far as they can. I’m breathing through my nose. I can only hold my head up for a minute before my shoulders cramp and I collapse and the water covers me like a grave. Then I drive my head up to breath again.

Another cramp knots the shoulders and I go under and all is quiet and amongst the terror and the crocodiles and the darkness, there is nothing. I drive my head up once more and start crying. This is death and I am alone. I cry again as my head slowly falls back as a torch light plays on the tide marker and voices come from behind and then more lights fall on the pipe as I go under and I hold my breath and a hand cups the back of my head. I look up and Nigel is shining the torch in my eyes and there’s the sound of men’s voices and a man with a megaphone voice says bring a snorkel and a stretcher.