Driven by Emotions (2 page)

What was going on?

Then I heard something rolling on the floor behind me. I looked down, and what I saw was so unbelievable, I was sure I had to be imagining it.

“A core memory!” Fear cried.

Yes. A core memory. Sitting on the floor, out of its holder. We all knew what that meant. We ran to the window and saw Goofball Island go dark. Without the core memory in the core memory holder,
Goofball could not be powered up. That’s why Riley hadn’t slid down the railing. The Goofball part of her was powered down.

At that moment, I noticed that the core memory holder was open, and Sadness was right next to it.

“Sadness!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“It looked like one was crooked,” Sadness said, “so I opened it and then it fell out!”

I put the core memory back in place and Goofball Island whirred to life. Thank goodness. I looked back at the screen and saw that Riley had jumped onto the railing and was sliding down.

Then Sadness reached out again for one of the core memories and it started to turn blue!

“Whoa, whoa,
whoa
!” I said, grabbing her hand. “Sadness, you nearly touched a core memory. And when you touch them, we can’t change them back!”

Sadness apologized and said she didn’t know what had gotten into her, but obviously she was a disaster waiting to happen. That wasn’t a
bad
thing; it was just something that
needed to be handled. So I handled it. I gave her some mind manuals to read. Who doesn’t love mind manuals? With titles like
Long Term Memory Retrieval, Volume 47
, you just know they
have to be fascinating! Okay, maybe not fascinating, but they gave Sadness something to do. Plus, that corner with the mind manual shelves is far away from the memories. I have to keep them
safe!

So that took care of Sadness for the moment, but by bedtime, she wasn’t the only one having trouble. The move had been really hard on everyone, and even though I reminded them we’d
been through worse, they didn’t see it. Disgust couldn’t get over the weird pizza, Fear was still freaking out about the missing moving van, and Sadness piped up that all of
Riley’s friends were far away and we’d never see them. Anger was so upset he wanted to shout that one curse word we knew. I was really struggling to keep them together, but then Mom
came in to kiss Riley good night, and you know what she did? She
thanked
Riley. Mom was so proud of Riley for being
joyful
through the difficult move. She said, “You’ve
stayed our happy girl. Your dad’s under a lot of pressure, but if you and I can keep smiling, it would be a big help. We can do that for him, right?”

At that moment, I couldn’t have been more proud. We had a higher purpose now—we needed to support Dad. Of course we could do that! I stepped up to the console and began driving.

Riley told Mom she’d definitely keep smiling.

“What did we do to deserve you?” said Mom, and she gave Riley a kiss good night.

The other Emotions agreed that Mom was right. And I was satisfied that we were all on the same page again…Team Happy!

After that, we were all tired. Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear went to sleep, but I had Dream Duty, which meant I took the night shift. I sent all the day’s memories down to Long Term
for storage, then settled in to watch the show that the Dream Productions team had put together. It played on the big screen, the same one where we watch Riley’s memories.

I’m a big fan of Dream Productions. They come up with some great shows—super original, real cutting-edge comedy, crazy action sequences. I have a whole list of favorites I call up
from time to time. But that night’s was
not
one of their best. It was, in fact, a nightmare about the new house, which was not okay at all. It was the last thing Riley needed after her
day. So even though I’m not supposed to mess with dreams, I made an executive decision. I pulled the plug on the dream and called up a memory for Riley and me to watch while she slept. It was
one of my favorites: the time when Riley showed off her skating moves to Mom and Dad. She did twirls and jumps—she was brilliant! And Mom and Dad were so proud; they smiled as they watched
her. Riley was so happy she couldn’t stop laughing.

I watched the memory all night long. I even skated with her, gliding in time with little Riley around Headquarters like it was a rink.

“Don’t you worry,” I told her. “I’m gonna make sure that tomorrow is another great day. I promise.”

I meant that promise, too. The next day was the first day of school, and I had huge plans for how to make it the best day ever.

And what better way to start the best day ever than with an accordion serenade? I have to say, I’m quite fabulous on the accordion. I don’t play it so much as
hug
it. The
melodious sound of my accordion made my fellow Emotions jump to their feet and emerge from the break room.

“Okay, first day of school!” I cheered. “Very, very exciting! I was up late last night figuring out a plan. Fear, I need a list of all the possible negative outcomes on the
first day at a new school.”

“Way ahead of you there,” Fear said, writing on a notepad. “Does anyone know how to spell ‘meteor’?”

“Disgust,” I said, “make sure Riley stands out today…but also blends in.”

“When I’m through, Riley will look so good the other kids will look at their own outfits and barf,” Disgust assured me.

I told Anger to unload the Train of Thought, which had just arrived at Headquarters. It’s an actual train that goes around the giant landscape of Riley’s mind delivering daydreams,
facts, opinions, lightbulb ideas, and memories. At the moment, it was delivering extra daydreams. I’d ordered them in case things got slow in class.

“Sadness,” I then said, with excitement in my voice, “I have a super-important job just for you.” I led her to a spot in the back of Headquarters and drew a chalk circle
on the floor around her feet. “This is the Circle of Sadness,” I said. “Your job is to make sure that all the Sadness stays inside of it.”

She wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but then again, when is she ever thrilled about anything? I knew it was a great plan.

As for me, I tasked myself with driving the console and making sure Riley stayed happy all day long. “All right, everyone,” I cried out to my fellow Emotions, “fresh start! We
are gonna have a good day, which will turn into a good week, which will turn into a good year, which will turn into a good
life
!”

Yep, I had everything in place. By the time this day was over, I was positive Riley would have people
clamoring
to be her best friend. She’d probably get thirty birthday party
invitations. Forty, maybe!

The others weren’t quite as sure as I was, especially when Riley’s teacher made her stand up and introduce herself. Not a problem. I worked the console, and Riley stood up and
smiled.

“My name is Riley Andersen,” she said. “I’m from Minnesota. And now I live here.”

Good. Charming. The other kids were loving her already!

Then the teacher asked for more information. She wanted to know about the weather. I knew Riley would have no problem with that one. She smiled and said, “Yeah, it gets pretty cold. The
lake freezes over, and that’s when we play hockey…”

As Riley told everyone about playing hockey with her best friend, Meg, I helped her out. I called up a memory of the whole family skating together and played it on the big screen. It was so
beautiful I couldn’t stop grinning.

“It’s kind of a family tradition,” Riley continued. “We go out on the lake almost every weekend.”

Then, suddenly, the screen in Headquarters turned blue!

“Or we did, until we moved away,” Riley said.

Wait. That shouldn’t be happening. The screen shouldn’t be blue. Riley shouldn’t be sad. This was a
happy
memory!

I spun around to see the projector. There was Sadness,
with her hands on the memory sphere!

“Sadness!” I snapped. “You touched a memory? We talked about this.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Sadness said. “I’m sorry.”

Unbelievable! I sent her back to her Circle of Sadness and frantically pushed some buttons on the console to get the now
sad
memory out of the projector, but it wouldn’t budge. And
the longer it sat there, the more upset Riley got. Soon she wasn’t even speaking. But she was still standing. In front of the whole class. About to cry! And as Disgust so helpfully pointed
out, all the cool kids were whispering.

“Get it out of there, Joy!” Fear wailed.

He was right. I had to get the memory out of the projector, even if I had to do it by hand. I yanked and tugged, but it was stuck tight.

“Somebody help me,” I said, and Fear, Anger, and Disgust grabbed hold of the sphere, too. At least, we had Fear at first. He gave up and ran around in a panic when Riley got so sad
she started to sob. I looked up at the console and realized why.
Sadness was driving the console!
That was worse than her touching a memory! With Sadness at the controls, there was no
possible way Riley could recover from this. I had to get Sadness off the console immediately! With a mighty tug, I finally yanked the blue memory out of the projector, then ran to Sadness and
pulled her away.

But it was too late. With a
PING!
a blue memory sphere rolled into Headquarters.

Everyone stopped and stared.

“It’s a core memory!” Fear said.

“But it’s blue!” Disgust gasped.

They were both right. The memory was blue, and it rolled right toward the core memory holder.

This was not acceptable. Riley couldn’t have a sad core memory. She
couldn’t
! It would change who Riley was fundamentally! I lunged for the button to pop up the core memory
holder. With the holder raised, the new memory hit the holder’s side and couldn’t go in. Success!

Now all I had to do was get this horrible blue core memory as far away from the core memory holder as possible. I pressed another button and lowered a vacuum tube from the ceiling—the same
vacuum that sends Riley’s daily memories to Long Term for storage. I knew the memory wouldn’t cause Riley any trouble down there.

But before I could get the memory sphere in the vacuum, Sadness tried to grab the memory away! I couldn’t believe it! She actually
wanted
to keep this blue core memory. I held the
sphere tight, but so did Sadness. Surprisingly, she has a heck of a grip. I struggled to get the sphere away from her, but before I could, we bumped into the core memory holder.

All five core memories spilled out.

I think I stopped breathing.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” wailed Disgust, Fear, and Anger.

Through the window, we saw all the Islands of Personality go dark.

This was the biggest disaster ever.
Ever
. I stopped fighting Sadness for the blue memory sphere and scrambled to gather the five
yellow
core memories. Sadness held on to the blue
one. She wanted to put it inside the core memory holder, but I wouldn’t let her. I lunged at the blue memory, and it slipped out of Sadness’s hands. I almost cried with relief as it got
sucked up the vacuum tube to Long Term Memory. But then, suddenly, I slipped and
dropped the yellow core memories
! One of them rolled toward the vacuum tube.

“No!” I shouted.

I leaped to save it…and got pulled into the vacuum tube myself, along with all five of the yellow core memories!

The tube whooshed me straight up out of Headquarters! The core memories were zipping along with me. I managed to corral them together, but it wasn’t easy. The fierce suction of the vacuum
threatened to tear them away, but I kept them as close as I could.

As I rocketed through the tube, everything around me was a blur. I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down. I didn’t know where I’d land. And then, suddenly…

BLAM!

I landed in a large cart of memory spheres. I could feel the spheres pushing into my back. Then I heard a scream. It was Sadness. I guess she’d been sucked up by the vacuum, too, and now
she was falling toward me.

THUMP!

Ignoring her, I began frantically digging through the memory spheres that we were sitting on top of. I’d lost track of the core memories when I fell. I needed to get them back to
Headquarters. If Riley lost the core memories, the Islands of Personality would be stopped forever, and then where would she be? More important…
who
would she be?

“One…two…three…okay, got ’em,” I said as I balanced the five memories in my arms.

I looked around. We were in the Mind World on the cliffs outside Long Term Memory. From there I could see all five Islands of Personality surrounding the giant tower of Headquarters, which
seemed impossibly high and incredibly far away. The islands themselves were separated from each other, Headquarters, and the cliffs by the vast abyss of Riley’s Memory Dump.

I jumped out of the cart and looked at Goofball Island. It was still completely dark. Sadness walked up behind me. “Riley’s Islands of Personality. They’re ALL down! This is
bad,” she said.

I assured her that we could fix it. “We just have to get back to Headquarters, plug the core memories in, and Riley will be back to normal.”

“Riley has no core memories, no personality islands, and no—” Sadness suddenly gasped.

“Wha—what is it?” I asked.

“You! You’re not in Headquarters. Without you, Riley can’t be happy,” said Sadness.

She was right. Riley would be miserable until I got back to Headquarters. There was no time to waste. We ran across the bridge that led to Goofball Island. When we made it to Goofball, we came
to the lightline that connected the island to the core memory holder in Headquarters. The lightline was like a power cord, and it was also our ticket back home! We just had to walk across it.
Easier said than done.

Sadness didn’t like the look of that lightline. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. It was super thin, and if we fell from it, we’d end up in the Memory Dump—forgotten
forever. I summoned all of my courage. “It’s not that high. It’s totally fiii-fine.” I took my first step out onto the lightline and nearly dropped one of the core memories!
“Whoa…whoa!”