Driven by Emotions (11 page)

Anger plugged the idea bulb into the console, and that was that. Riley sat up in bed and pulled out her laptop to check bus schedules. Of course, she needed money to buy a ticket, but Anger
reminded us that Mom had left her purse downstairs in the kitchen. I would have been far too afraid to take money, but Anger was driving now. He led Riley downstairs, had her pluck out Mom’s
credit card, and then snuck her back upstairs.

That made Honesty Island collapse. I was too overwhelmed to even flinch.

The following morning, as we loaded up Riley’s backpack for school, I had second thoughts. “Hold on, guys,” I said. “Are we really doing this?”

Anger pushed me away from the console. He thought running away was the only answer, and since I didn’t have a better one, I let him steer. Riley left home without a single word to Mom and
Dad and began walking toward the bus station. As she walked, I just couldn’t stop thinking of all the terrible things that happen to kids who run away. We didn’t even know where we were
going! Getting lost was almost inevitable. Once we got off at the bus stop in Minnesota, where would we go? What would we do? Riley needed to get some maps of Minnesota—stat!

As she approached a public library, I took the console for a while. She walked right into the library and began looking for the maps. She didn’t find a map, but she did find a Minnesota
tour guidebook that had a ton of small maps and big pullout one. It was perfect! She headed for the checkout desk, but along the way I pushed a few buttons on the console. One more stop: the
library catalog computers. Riley typed in “runaways” in the subject field and, moments later, the screen had a long list of book titles. I had no idea there were so many books about
runaway kids! We went to the stacks to look at some of them. They were all so scary! Even the covers were terrifying…all these young boys and girls with terror in their eyes, backpacks slung
over their shoulders, walking along shadowy roads…did we really want to be like them?

The worst part was the librarian. She kept coming over and asking if Riley needed help. And when she saw what kind of books we were looking at…I just knew she had our plan figured out,
and she’d call Mom and Dad.

Incredibly, that didn’t happen. Riley didn’t waste another second and headed straight for the desk to check out the guidebook. (I was going to make sure she mailed it back to the
library before the due date—we didn’t want to get thrown in jail for overdue fees.)

As Riley scurried out of the library and continued on her way to the bus station, Anger resumed control of the console. It was a good thing he had the controls, because we had to go through a
dimly lit part of town that had shadows in every corner. Shadows that could hold kidnappers…or muggers…or hyenas. I had images in my head of Riley ending up dead on the side of the
road or having a really bad picture appear on the sides of milk cartons all over the country.

Mom called while we were walking. I knew Riley should answer, but I didn’t want her to. I was too afraid to hear what Mom might say. Was she worried? Did she know Riley was running away?
Oh, no! What if she could track us through Riley’s phone? Maybe that would only work if we answered. Better not to answer. Better to just keep moving.

The station was filled with strangers. Not just strangers—
strange
strangers. I made sure we stayed in the most wide-open spaces we could find, and we made eye contact with no
one.

Riley’s phone rang.

“Oh…” I moaned. “It’s Mom again. What do we do?”

Family Island made a loud groan as it started to topple.

“We’re losing the last island!” Disgust cried.

Suddenly, Anger decided that running away was the worst idea ever.

Disgust reached for the idea bulb we’d plugged into the console. “Let’s get that idea out of her head,” she said.

She and Anger both tried, then Anger said, “It’s stuck!”

“Whaddya mean it’s stuck?” I asked.

Then all the controls started shutting down. A black shadow spread over the console, like an eclipse of tar.

“What is
this
?” I screeched.

Anger picked up a chair and manfully slammed it down on the console…but the chair bounced off and nearly hit me in the face, which wasn’t quite the effect I wanted. I tried to
attack the thing with a crowbar, but that didn’t work, either. At least it wasn’t just me.

“How do we stop it?” I asked.

“Make her feel scared!” Disgust suggested. “That’ll make her change her mind!”

“Yes!” I cried. “Brilliant!”

I ran to the control panel and pushed every button. I tried to recall the scariest things she’d ever experienced: the food at camp, the cockroach she once found swimming in the toilet,
that oversized Easter Bunny at the amusement park…but nothing worked. The console didn’t even respond.

“Guys,” I said, “I can’t make Riley feel anything.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, and for the first time, I think Anger and Disgust were as frightened as I always was.

“That’s it,” Anger said. “It’s over. There’s nothing more to do.”

He was right. The world was ending, and it was punctuated with a horrible banging sound against the window. It was over. Headquarters was falling apart. The walls around us were collapsing! We
would all be buried alive!

“It’s Joy!” Disgust shouted.

What? Joy?
Joy
was back?

That was amazing! Life wasn’t over after all!

I ran to the window and saw Joy and Sadness clinging to the outside. Disgust, Anger, and I tried to open it, but the thing was made of safety glass, which I’d always loved. It
wouldn’t budge—not even when Anger threw a chair at it and tried to break it. Then the wheels started turning in Disgust’s head. She insulted Anger until he fumed so violently
that flames burst from the top of his head. Then she used him like a blowtorch to cut a hole in the window. Joy and Sadness were finally able to climb inside Headquarters.

“Thank goodness you’re back!” I cried.

Joy didn’t even answer. She just looked at the screen and saw that Riley was on the bus, and the bus driver was pulling away.

For the first time in ages, I wasn’t worried. I knew Joy would handle everything and make Riley happy again.

But she didn’t.

“Sadness,” she said, “it’s up to you.”

What?
Did Joy go crazy as she was wandering out there in the Mind World? What was she talking about? Sadness couldn’t make things better. She’s the one who started this whole
mess by turning Riley’s memories from happy to sad. Letting Sadness take control was dangerous. Yet Joy didn’t seem worried. If anything,
Sadness
looked nervous and worried, but
she took the console.

I concentrated on my breathing as I watched the screen. It only took a few moments before Riley suddenly stood up from her seat, raced to the front of the bus, and told the driver to stop. With
Sadness still at the controls, Riley ran home and told her parents exactly how she felt about the move, and how sad she was to leave behind her old friends and the home she loved.

The truth? I kind of teared up listening to her.

I was afraid Mom and Dad wouldn’t understand, or would be mad at her for not being the happy kid they loved…but they only hugged Riley. They said they were sad, too. At that moment,
a new core memory was formed, and it created a new Family Island. Riley was healing already.

That was a while back. Now we have an amazing new view from Headquarters. We can see all the new Islands of Personality. They’re pretty spectacular. All except Boy Band Island—that
one is just plain annoying. But the really great thing is that Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and I work together now at a cool new console. Sure, it can get a little crowded sometimes, and I always
risk getting singed by Anger or sobbed on by Sadness, but it’s worth it. We’re a team, and there’s nothing scary about that—well, other than the possibility of a meteor
striking when we’re all standing together.

Okay, listen up
and listen good, because this is important. I don’t know what any of these other Emotions
have said, but I’m going to tell you the
real
story of the disaster that was Riley’s Big Move, and I’m going to tell it exactly the way it happened so everyone knows the
truth.

It started, of course, with me. I showed up in Riley’s life pretty early. You know why? Because life isn’t fair. But when people try to make it not fair to Riley, I fight back. Even
when Riley was a toddler, there was unfairness to be dealt with. Take this for example: Dad used to tell Riley that if she didn’t eat her dinner, she wasn’t going to have any
dessert.

Excuse me? No
dessert
? That move didn’t fly with me. I was
not
above having Riley throw a tantrum to get what she wanted. Trust me on this: sometimes a tantrum is what it
takes.

I should have had her throw a tantrum when we heard about moving from Minnesota to San Francisco. But no, I believed Joy when she said Mom and Dad knew what they were doing and it would all be
fine. WRONG!

The car ride to California was cramped and long; the food on the road made Riley’s stomach hurt; the music Dad played was boring and for old people; and to top it all off, when we finally
got to San Francisco, the house was disgusting!

“We’re supposed to live here?” I roared to Joy.

She said the house might be a disappointment, but Riley’s room would be wonderful.

WRONG AGAIN!

“Get out the rubber ball,” I said when I saw the tiny slope-roofed cell. “We’re in solitary confinement.”

And you know what happened from there? It got worse. The moving van with all our stuff got lost. Our brilliant leader, Joy—please note my sarcasm—thought pizza would make us feel
better, which it would have
if there were such a thing as pizza in that godforsaken town!
The pizza place Riley and Mom went to gave us some garbage with broccoli on it and called it
“pizza.” The flames were starting to flare up on my head.

“Congratulations, San Francisco,” I roared. “You’ve
ruined pizza
! First the Hawaiians and now
you
!”

Unreal. Oh, sure, Joy showed Riley and the rest of us some memories that made us feel better for a second, but that blew up in her face when Sadness touched the memory spheres and turned them
blue. Yeah, that’s right—Joy tried to cheer up Riley with a memory that was suddenly a
sad
memory. How was that gonna work? And it wasn’t like Sadness’s blue tinge on
the memory spheres was temporary. Oh, no. The blue was on it
for good
.

But, hey, turning happy memories sad was apparently only one of Sadness’s new skills. Know what the other one was?
Destroying Islands of Personality!

Okay, not
destroying
them—not yet, anyway—but while Joy was trying her whole shiny-scrubby thing on the memory Sadness had tainted, Sadness decided to open up the core memory
holder. She thought the memories were crooked, she said. She wanted to straighten them out, she said. Well, she straightened one out all right. She straightened it right out of the holder! It was
the core memory that powered Goofball Island, and when it rolled onto the floor, the island went dark!

Guess how much good a dark island does Riley?

DING, DING, DING! That’s right, folks—NONE!

That night, I said what everyone else was thinking but was afraid to say. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad moved us here. They must suffer for this!”

Joy tried to do her little “think of the good things” song and dance, but I was having none of it.

“No, Joy,” I told her. “There’s absolutely no reason for Riley to be happy right now. Let us handle this.”

I wasn’t sure yet
how
we were going to handle it, although a bulldozer or sledgehammer seemed like a good place to start.

Then Mom came in and was all lovey-dovey happy because Riley’s upbeat nature made the stressful move easier on everyone. It was…well, you know…kind of nice. I told Joy I
never doubted her for a second, which was a bald-faced lie, but I guessed I owed her a little pat on the back. And for a half a second I was even optimistic. Maybe things
would
turn around
in this place.