"Why am I here again?" I asked as Denny pulled him onto the boat. "I told you, I want to stay here on the mainland."

"Aw, come on, mi hombre!" Denny pleaded. I rolled my eyes. Ever since Denny had gotten back from his vacation in Spain, he always found the chance to slip Spanish into an everyday discussion. Plus, he never bothered not pointing out that his skin was a heck of a lot tanner than mine.

Well, at least Denny isn't planning on going to Ireland. He looks horrible in green.

Let me tell you something, mister or madam or whatever the hell you are. Every time Denny goes to any country, he gets heavily influenced by their culture. Let me give you a small list of what has happened with every country he's he went to Italy, he always said 'Che palle' when he was sad about he went to Germany, he constantly said 'Nein!', even when no-one's asking him a he went to Japan, he said 'desu' at the end of every sentence. Every. Single. he went to France, he kept on talking about croissants and crepes and stuff like that. I wish I had told him that the only French food I care about is French fries.

So you see, this is why I don't let him take a single step out of America. I swear, if the man fell into the ocean, he would turn into a piece of coral or a dolphin or some marine animal.

Which reminds me. Denny works as a fisherman. That's why he's constantly traveling; he's just looking for good places to fish. Personally, I couldn't care less about fish. Unless, of course, its gonna be on my dinner plate. Then I care. But every other time, no. But for some strange reason, Denny brings me on every trip he goes on. Or he tries to, at last place he took me was France. To be honest, I was only interested in the Eiffel tower. You know, with the view and such. Everything else – the fashion, the food (okay, not so much the food, but it wasn't as interesting as the Eiffel tower), the females – I paid absolutely no mind to.

Anyway, Denny was dragging me onto the boat. He was saying something about making me happy, bringing some sunshine into my life, crap like that.

"No," I said shortly, trying to wrench myself out of his death grip. "I'm perfectly happy here."

"Come on~! I've got the deal of a lifetime! You can't miss it!" Denny said, finally letting me free. It took all my resolve to not go sprinting off back to my house.

"...fine. What do you want?" I asked, narrowing my eyes a little.

"Well, you love animals, right?"

"Denny, we've been friends for five years and you still don't know that?"

"It was a rhetorical question, GEEZ! Anyway, there's this farmer on the island. She needs animals, ASAP, otherwise she can't ship anything for the whole winter. No shipping equals no food for the island."

Denny paused to take his breath.

"Luckily, there's also an animal shop that's in need of a trader. That's where you come in, mi amigo," he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. I scrunched up my nose and pushed the arm off me.

"Number one,use that blasted language around me one more time and I swear, I'll knock you into next week. Number two... you got yourself a deal," I said, sticking out my hand. Denny smirked and stuck out his hand too, but before we could shake, I pulled mine away. "On one condition."

Denny groaned.

"Fine, what do you want?" he asked.

"I still have business to attend to here, what with insurance and all. I need to be here at least five days of the week so I can do that," I said. Oh yeah, that's something I forgot to tell you. My parents died a few years ago, leaving me with a great sum of money. There were also those insurance policies that hung over their heads. Basically, I'm sort of a millionaire. I don't like talking about it almost as much as I despise carrots. The fruit of the demon.

That reminds me. What the hell is a carrot anyway? A fruit? A vegetable? Some sort of hideous mutation of the two? Either way, I don't like carrots. End of story.

"Dang insurance," Denny sighed. "But it can't be helped. Now, shake."

The corners of my lips turned up a fraction of a centimeter as I shook hands with the tanned boy – crap, now I'm doing it.

So, there's my version of how Vaughn heard about the island. Ignore the fact that Denny's there already. *shifty eyes*