Driven by Emotions (13 page)

Fear and Disgust felt the same way. We all tried to get the running away idea out of the console, but it wouldn’t move.

“It’s stuck!” I yelled.

It was worse than stuck. It was burning up. The idea got so hot it seared Fear’s hands when he touched it. That probably traumatized him for life. He won’t be touching idea bulbs
again anytime soon.

I then tried throwing a chair to dislodge the idea, but even that didn’t do the trick. And then this crazy black shadow spread over the console. I had never seen anything like it before.
It was completely destroying the console! Fear tried to scare Riley in hopes that would get the idea out of the console, but the controls were unresponsive.

“What have we done?” I asked.

But I knew what we’d done. We’d messed up. Royally.

When we heard something bang against the window of Headquarters, I figured the place was collapsing just like the islands. But for once, I’m happy to say I was wrong. Disgust ran to the
window to check it out and cried, “It’s Joy!”

We followed Disgust to the window, and there they were: Joy and Sadness, dangling from a ledge outside. Why they tried to come in that way I’ll never know. The windows don’t open, so
there was no way to get them in. Oh, we tried. I even threw a chair at the window, but it just bounced off.

Then I had the most brilliant idea. Well, maybe it really wasn’t my idea, but that doesn’t matter. You know how I can make my head burst into flames? That’s exactly what I did!
I essentially became a blowtorch and cut a hole through the window! Then Joy and Sadness crawled through the hole and back into Headquarters.

Yep, I pretty much saved the day.

I’m sure you heard from the other Emotions what happened next. Joy let Sadness take the reins, blah, blah, blah, Sadness found her purpose and saved the day, blah, blah, blah,
reconciliation with Mom and Dad, blah, blah, blah, Joy and Sadness BFFs.

I wasn’t moved at all. NOT. AT. ALL. Okay, a little bit. But only because I love Riley, and afterwards I was
fine
, and no one even saw me cry. Didn’t happen. They can’t
prove ANYTHING!

So it’s been several months since all this went down, and I’m now a far more integral part of Riley’s emotional life. We all are: the new core memories are multicolored now, as
are most of the new memories. We even run the place at a new console that lets us all drive at once, which is pretty cool—especially when we play hockey. I’m the aggressive one, Fear
looks out for defenders, Joy keeps us motivated, Sadness comes into play when we get hurt, and Disgust is more concerned about keeping Riley’s sweat quotient down, but still, we make a really
good team. I like it.

You want to know another great thing? Riley has some fresh Islands of Personality now, and some expansions of the old ones. My favorite? The new “Friendly Argument” section of
Friendship Island. When that fires up, I’m so happy you could almost mistake me for Joy.

Almost…but not quite.

Hi. Um…I
don’t really think you’ll want to hear what I have to say…people usually
don’t. But I’m supposed to tell you about Riley moving to San Francisco from Minnesota and all the stuff that happened then, so I guess I will, but if you want to stop at any point and
read one of the other Emotions telling their version of the story, I understand.

So…um…let’s see. Where to start?

Well, I’ve always loved Riley. When she was just thirty-three seconds old, I helped her cry. She needed to cry. She had just popped into the world, and it was so big, and she was so small,
and she was cold and hungry and needed someone to bundle her up. So she cried. And she got what she needed.

There are five of us Emotions inside Riley’s head: me, Joy, Fear, Disgust, and Anger, but I always felt like the odd one out. I don’t know why. I just did. And it made me sad. I felt
like Joy especially didn’t understand me, and since she was the one who always took charge, it was just easier to be by myself. Except when Riley needed me.

Then the move happened. I felt terrible leaving our old home in Minnesota, where we had so many memories, and I felt even worse when I saw our new house. It was so dark and dusty.

“Do we have to live here?” I asked.

Riley’s room was small and cramped, too, and I almost cried when I thought of Riley shut away in there, but then Joy said we could decorate it and that sounded nice. But when we found out
the moving van was missing, I was sure we’d never see it again, and that was almost unbearable.

“All our stuff is gone,” I said. “I miss our clothes, our rainbow socks…everything.”

San Francisco just seemed like the unhappiest place in the world. Dad was even more stressed there. And he had to leave during dinnertime. He never did that when we lived in Minnesota.

“He doesn’t love us anymore,” I told the other Emotions. “That’s sad.”

In fact, it felt so sad that I knew Riley needed me to drive the console. I walked over to take the controls, but Joy wouldn’t let me.

“Joy, what are you doing?” I asked.

She said she should drive because we were going to have lunch, and that sounded like a fun thing, so I guessed that made sense. But it turned out lunch wasn’t fun. It was a yucky pizza
with broccoli. And when Riley and Mom got back home, Joy tried to cheer them up with happy memories, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was supposed to be driving. Or if not driving, then at
least I was supposed to be a part of the memory.

I stared at the sphere Joy had plugged in. I saw the memory on the screen, too. It was the time during the road trip when Dad accidentally let the car roll backward and it hit the tail of a
cement dinosaur. It was funny…but to me it was sad, too, because that road trip was over, and now we were stuck in a place that was new and kind of creepy and where we didn’t really
belong.

I couldn’t help myself. While everyone else was watching the memory, I moved closer and closer to the sphere…and then I touched it.

The screen turned blue.

How did that happen? I didn’t mean for it to happen.

Everyone spun and looked at me. Then they looked at the sphere. I looked at it, too. It was
blue
. It wasn’t just the screen that was blue, the
memory sphere
was blue. It was
a sad memory now, even though it had been a happy memory before.

“What did you do?” Joy asked.

“I just touched it,” I said.

Joy rubbed the memory. I guess she was trying to rub off the blue. But it wouldn’t come off.

“That shouldn’t make it change,” Joy said.

She was right. I couldn’t explain how it happened. I felt bad because everyone was looking at me, and Disgust even said I did something bad by making the memory unhappy. Whenever Riley
thought about that time with the dinosaurs, she’d feel sad now. Thanks to me.

“Don’t touch any other memories until we figure out what’s going on,” Joy told me. I said okay, and I meant it…but when everyone went back to looking at Riley on
the big screen in Headquarters, I noticed the core memory holder. There was something about it. One of the memories inside looked crooked. I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch the memories.
I’d promised Joy I wouldn’t. Still, I couldn’t help it. I needed to get into that core memory holder and straighten out the crooked memory. I just…I had to. I opened the
holder and reached inside…

…and one of the core memories rolled out.

Uh-oh.

I wondered if I could slip the core memory back into the holder without anyone noticing, but it was already too late. Everyone was looking at me. They didn’t look happy. I tried to
explain, but what I said wasn’t what I expected to say. It was more true.

“I wanted to maybe hold one,” I admitted.

I still wanted to hold one. I reached out to one of the core memories in the holder and it started to turn blue. I felt like it was pulling me toward it. Like it wanted me to touch it.

“Whoa, whoa,
whoa
!” Joy said. She grabbed my hand so I couldn’t touch it anymore. “Sadness, when I said don’t touch any memories, that meant core memories
most of all
!”

She put the core memory that had fallen back into the holder. I hadn’t even realized that when the memory fell out, Goofball Island had gone dark, but now I saw it light up again.

That was a relief. I wouldn’t want Riley to lose any of her islands. I just wanted to do what the core memories wanted me to do. They wanted me to touch them. At least, that’s how I
felt. Didn’t that mean it was true?

“I’m sorry,” I told Joy. “Something’s wrong with me. I, uh…it’s like I’m having a breakdown.”

“You’re not having a breakdown,” Joy said. “It’s stress.”

“I keep making mistakes like that,” I said. “I’m awful…”

“Nooo, you’re not,” Joy said.

“…and annoying,” I added.

“Well, uh…eh…you know what?” Joy suggested. “You can’t focus on what’s going wrong. There’s always a way to turn things around. To find the
fun.”

“Yeah,” I said. I guessed that was true. “Find the fun. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Okay,” Joy said, “well, try to think of something funny.”

I thought hard. “Oh! Remember the funny movie where the dog dies?”

Joy didn’t think that was funny, so she reminded me of the time Riley’s best friend, Meg, made Riley laugh so hard milk came out of her nose.

“Yeah, that hurt,” I said. “It felt like fire. Ooh, it was awful.”

I got sad just thinking about how much it hurt. I guess Joy wanted me to feel better, so she asked me about my favorite things to do.

“My favorite?” I asked. “Um, well, I like it when we’re outside…”

“That’s good,” Joy said. “Like there’s the beach and sunshine. Oh! Like that time we buried Dad in the sand up to his neck—”

“Oh,” I said. “I was thinking more like rain.”

Joy said she liked rain, too. She liked stomping around in puddles, cool umbrellas, and lightning storms.

I said I was thinking more about when the rain runs down Riley’s back and makes her shoes soggy. She gets all cold and shivery, and everything just starts feeling droopy.

I started to cry.

“Oh, hey, hey, hey…easy,” Joy said. “Why are you crying? Oh, it’s…it’s just like really the opposite of what we’re going for here.”

“Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems,” I told her.

That’s when Joy told me I should sit by myself and read some mind manuals. I’d read them all before, but I didn’t want to disappoint Joy. It kinda seemed like I always
disappointed her, so I wanted to try and be better. I settled in to do some reading.

Later, Mom came to kiss Riley good night. Mom said she was glad Riley was her happy self because it made the move so much better. All the other Emotions seemed to feel better when they heard
that, and I did, too…but not really. Maybe I should have, but instead I just felt funny inside. Not funny ha-ha, but funny weird. Maybe I was still upset about the broccoli pizza
Riley’d been served earlier, I didn’t know…I just knew I felt off. I hoped maybe I’d go to sleep and wake up and everything would be better.

Joy seemed to think it was. She woke up and played her accordion and got all excited for the first day of school. She gave everyone jobs, too.

“Sadness, I have a super-important job just for you,” she said.

That sounded exciting. “Really?” I asked.

“Mmm hmmm. Follow me,” she said.

Joy led her to a spot in the very back of Headquarters, then knelt down on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“There. Perfect,” she said. She stood up, and I saw she’d drawn a chalk circle around my feet. “This is the Circle of Sadness,” she said. “Your job is to make
sure that all the Sadness stays inside of it.”

“So…you want me to just stand here?” I asked. It didn’t sound like much of a job.

“Hey,” Joy said, “it’s not
my
place to tell you how to do your job. Just make sure that
all
the Sadness stays in the circle.”

She used her foot to nudge mine back inside the circle. I guess I’d let it slip outside the Circle of Sadness. I stood there and looked at Joy.

“See?” she said. “You’re a pro at this! Isn’t this fun?”