Penguin Books Australia

Chapter 1 – Run!

No other fish on the Great Barrier Reef is quite as cute, nor as harmless, as the tiny orange and white clown fish. Yet I blame a clown fish for what happened. One made famous right around the world thanks to a movie.

'Nemo!'

I looked round in surprise. The Japanese boy was waving at me. Up until that point, we had mostly ignored each other. We'd both been too busy exploring the narrow shelf of reef exposed by the low tide. Besides, there was the problem of communicating.

'Nemo!' he called again, and pointed down into a shimmering tidal pool.

I made my way towards him, skirting a colourful coral garden and being very careful where I placed my good foot. The Reef might be a 'natural wonderland', like all the tourist brochures say, but a whole range of dangers lie in wait for the unwary: stonefish, stingrays, fire coral, blue-ringed octopuses and deadly sea wasps, just to name a few. But little did I suspect, as I wobbled up to the Japanese boy crouching on the coral shelf at the very tip of the island, that the greatest threat to our safety that afternoon had nothing to do with the reef. It would come from the sparkling aquamarine expanse of the Coral Sea behind us.

The Japanese boy was wearing yellow inflatable water wings over his T-shirt. It wasn't a good look, but who was I to judge? I had one foot encased in plaster with a huge black rubbish bag taped around it, and split tennis balls jammed onto the ends of my crutches to help me walk on the reef.

'What have you found?' I asked, laying my modified crutches on the coral beside me as I crouched to look.

He removed his wraparound sunglasses and pointed into the water. At the bottom of the pool, partially obscured by a semicircle of yellow plate coral, a pair of clown fish nestled among the fleshy tentacles of a large mauve sea anemone.

'Nemo,' he repeated.

He knew no English, I knew no Japanese. But we had both seen the movie.

'Nemo,' I said, returning his smile.

The sea breeze ruffled the boy's short spiky hair. Without his sunglasses he reminded me of someone, but I couldn't think who. He looked only about ten or eleven, much younger than me. But that didn't matter; it would be good to have someone to hang out with besides the twins. My family had been at the resort for nearly a week and we were all growing a bit tired of each other's company. The Japanese boy and his parents had the cabin next to ours. We were neighbours, but the language barrier had kept us from introducing ourselves. Until now.

I tapped my chest. 'I'm Sam.'

He gave a little bow. 'Ooi dekite uresii desu, Sam,' he said shyly. Then he touched his own chest. 'Wotoshi no nomoe wo Michi desu.'

It sounded complicated. 'So you're called . . . Michidesu?'

'Michi,' he corrected me.

'Glad to meet you, Michi,' I said.

He bowed again, and for a moment Michi and I smiled at each other. Then, because there was nothing else we could say, we turned our attention back to the fish. They were cute, all right, and very much like the ones in the movie. But soon I would wish we had never laid eyes on them. If we hadn't been so preoccupied with the two Nemo lookalikes, we might have noticed the danger before it was too late.

Michi saw it first. Suddenly he gripped my arm and yelled something in Japanese. I reached for my crutches and struggled upright. Holy guacamole! I couldn't believe my eyes. Something weird was going on. The horizon had changed – it looked higher than it had a minute ago. And much closer!

Michi started talking flat out in his own language. Most of it meant nothing to me, but one word snagged in my brain: tsunami.

Then I said an English word – Run! – and Michi didn't need a translation for that either.