CASSIE
The German boy held out his hand to help me up. I didn't trust any of these new kids, but I took his hand as a reflex. He pulled me up slowly, but without faltering one bit. He was as strong as he was gentle.
"I'm Manfred," he told me once I was on my feet again. "Or Manny. What's your name?"
I looked at him skeptically. After guarding my name for so long, I wasn't about to hand it out to any random person, especially not one who'd been chasing me a moment ago. "Sophie," I said. He smiled and held out his hand once again, this time to shake. I didn't reach for it again.
He smiled and relaxed his hand to his side. "I know you're skeptical. You would be; your team's such a ghost. We've had so much trouble contacting you."
I started to walk over to a curb so I could sit. Manny's smile was so warm and friendly, it was hard for me not to trust him. But I knew that controllers could be awfully convincing when they wanted to be, and I was determined to remain firm in not giving him any ground. At least not until I'd talked to Jake and figured out what he thought about all this.
"Yeah?" I asked as I sat down on the curb. I wanted to keep him talking. That would accomplish two things: get me information, and keep me from having to give him information.
"You guys sure are careful," he stated. I nodded.
"We have to be."
"I understand; we take a lot of cautious measures ourselves." He sat down next to me and we hung out in silence for a few moments. Then he said, "I don't suppose you know your way to... anywhere around here?"
I turned my head and looked at him. He was an attractive boy. Tall, broad and muscular, athletic build. He reminded me of Jake, but he had brown hair instead of blonde and brown eyes instead of Jake's gorgeous blue. But he was every bit as good-looking, and even a little taller. I considered how old he might be. Eighteen or nineteen, I guessed.
((Can anyone hear me?)) I asked my fellow Animorphs. ((Are you still in range?))
Out loud I said, "I might." I didn't want him to know how defenseless I was.
"Well, I'm sure lost," he said. He stretched out his legs and lightly slapped around his baggy jeans, getting the dust off them. "Only my second trip to Spain. Last time I was in Santiago de Compostella, it's northeast. Lovely city, just lovely. Farther from home, though."
"Yeah," I muttered. He continued.
"I suppose they're about the same to you, huh? Or, they might as well be. Even if one's an extra hour on a plane, what's one hour when you fly that far already?"
"Yeah," I agreed. He shook his head, still smiling.
"You do speak English, don't you?"
I turned and looked at him in surprise. "Of course I speak English. Are you an idiot?"
He laughed a good, heartfelt laugh. It was hard for me to admit, but Manny was growing on me. He seemed like an awful nice guy. "It's just that, it seems like 'yeah' is the only word you know."
"Your English is pretty good," I said. If I had to talk to him, I'd at least keep the conversation away from Yeerk-like things, or anything regarding personal information.
"Yeah, well, it has to be. It's the only way for us all to communicate. We're in so many different countries with so many different languages. English was the easiest, since most of us had already suffered through a year or two of it. Of course we had to study it more, but it's paid off. And we've learned a lot just from speaking it with each other."
"Where are you from?"
"Can't you tell?"
I paused and thought about his accent. Surprisingly, it wasn't very strong. He was definitely not born and raised in the heart of America, but it had faded enough that I wasn't quite sure.
"Europe, right?"
He nodded. "Yeeeees..." He looked at me with expectant eyes.
"Probably, Germany or Austria or Poland or somewhere in that area."
"Germany. Berlin, in fact."
"East or west Berlin?" I asked with a smirk. It was the first time I'd seen him without a smile on his own face; he just shook his head with a frown.
"It's true, what they say about Americans. You have no idea what goes on abroad. The separation of the city ended in-"
"I was kidding."
He paused and stared at me for a second, then started to laugh. I smiled along with him; his happiness was contagious.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "What a rude assumption."
"It's okay, it's hard to tell a joke when it's not funny."
He shook his head and continued grinning, looking into my eyes. It scared me how fearlessly he looked at me. It wasn't that he looked intimidating at me, but he just looked... so completely unafraid, the way someone looks at a kitten. I wished he had some sense of fear from me, or at least an unsettling feeling of the unknown. But then, it seemed he knew a lot about me. That worried me, too.
A lot of things about him worried me.
A/N: Good grief! Brachets don't work either! Thanks for letting me know, Fathom, or I never would have noticed. How 'bout double parenthasis?
