by Elise Allen
Yeah, okay, maybe they didn’t actually stop and point, but mentally they did. I could see it in their eyes. Especially the cool girls’ eyes. They had no clue how awesome Riley really was, and they were never going to give us a chance to prove it. Not anymore.
I couldn’t let Riley deal with that nonsense. I made sure she brought a book along to school. A good book—some giant intimidating-looking thing Mom had brought from home in the station wagon. I had Riley pull it out before each class and act like she was way too engrossed to care that no one wanted to talk to her. It worked for lunch, too. She sat on a bench all by herself and kept her nose in that book while she picked at the cafeteria slop. That way everyone knew she was way too cool to care what a bunch of kids thought about her.
The book thing worked for school, but after school we had to deal with something more challenging: those hockey tryouts Mom had been talking about the night before. Tryouts might have been fine if Riley had her core memories and Hockey Island was still running, but she didn’t and it wasn’t. It was dark. So Fear, Anger, and I knew what would happen if Riley attempted to play hockey. It was going to get real ugly, real quick.
When we arrived at the hockey rink, I quickly looked around. I didn’t see any of the cool kids there. At least that was a relief. I did not want them to see what was about to happen to Riley.
“Good luck, sweetie!” Mom cheered as Riley took the ice.
“Luck isn’t going to help us now,” I told Anger and Fear. “If she tries to use Hockey Island, it’s going down.”
That’s how it seemed to work. If Riley tried to activate an island without the core memory to power it, the whole island would crumble.
But Fear had a solution. He had recalled every hockey memory he could think of to take the place of the core memory. Yep, he had us knee-deep in memory spheres.
“One of these has got to work in place of the core memory,” Fear said.
Yeah. Like he knew. But, hey, we had to try. We started pumping hockey memories into the core memory holder. Fear ran to the window to check on Hockey Island. Even I could see it was lighting up. Not much, but a little.
“Ha-ha!” Fear cheered. “We did it! It’s working—”
BOOM! The core memory holder flat-out rejected one of the memory spheres; blew it out like a bullet and nailed Anger right in the stomach.
I laughed. Just for a second. You totally would have, too—little, red Anger getting whopped like that. But then he roared back to the console and he was—shocker—furious. He took the controls and had Riley play without even thinking, just slapping the puck around and…I’m not even going to pretend I know anything about hockey, but whatever Riley was doing wasn’t hockey. It was ugly, and soon she stormed off the rink and tore off her skates. Mom tried to calm her down and tell her everything was going to be okay, which just proved she knew nothing about what was going on in Riley’s head.
“Stop saying everything will be all right!” Riley roared, and then stomped out of the building.
You can guess what happened to Hockey Island, right? Rubble.
By that night, I couldn’t even deal anymore. “On a scale of one to ten,” I said, “I give this day an F.”
“Well, why don’t we quit standing around and do something?” Anger asked.
“Like what, genius?” I pressed him.
“Like quitting,” Fear said. “That’s what I’m doing.”
For real. He was. He had a recall tube coming down and he was going to zip away to who-knows-where like Joy and Sadness. But of course, this was Fear. He couldn’t even quit correctly. He got sucked halfway into the tube, got stuck, and practically smeared his face off on the tube.
Can you believe I have to live with these two? Me neither.
“Emotions can’t quit, genius,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” Anger said. “Wait a minute!” He started rummaging through Riley’s idea bulbs, then held one up like it was something special.
“What is it?” Fear asked.
“Oh, nothing…just the best idea ever,” Anger said.
“What?” I asked.
“All the good core memories were made in Minnesota,” Anger said. “Ergo, we go back to Minnesota and make more. Ta-da!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Fear. “You’re saying…we run away?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it the Happy Core Memory Development Program.”
It still sounded majorly gross to me. If I’m traveling, I want to travel in comfort. Running away would not equal comfort. It would equal cheap food and smelly buses.
Of course, our new home wasn’t much better. And Anger was right, we’d had it pretty good in Minnesota.
Fear suggested we sleep on it. I was cool with that. Beauty sleep always helped. This time, though, I didn’t sleep well at all. And when I woke up, Fear was quaking under the console. “What is going on?” I asked.
“We were at school,” he blabbered, “and we were naked, and there was a dog, and his back half was chasing him…and then we saw Bing Bong.”
“You idiot!” Anger screamed. “It was a dream! This is ridiculous, and we can’t even get a good night’s sleep anymore. Time to take action.” He grabbed the idea bulb he’d had earlier—the one about running away. “Stupid Mom and Dad,” he grumbled. “If they hadn’t moved us, none of this would’ve happened.” He moved the idea to the console, where he could plug it in and make it an official live idea in Riley’s mind. “Who’s with me?” Anger asked.
I thought about it for a moment. Running away was a big deal. But honestly, things couldn’t get any worse.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Anger plugged the idea into the console, and Riley sat up in bed, inspired. She pulled out her laptop.
“So how’re we gonna get to Minnesota from here?” I asked.
“Well, why don’t we go to the elephant lot and rent an elephant?” Anger railed.
Seriously, the sarcasm I have to deal with. It’s like a joke.
“What do you think?” Anger continued. “We’re taking the bus!”
The smelly, crowded bus. Private jet would be more my speed, but I guess that wasn’t so much an option. Honestly, I didn’t even know if a bus was an option. “A ticket costs money,” I noted. “How do we get money?”
“Mom’s purse,” Anger said.
“You wouldn’t!” I gasped.
“Oh, but I would,” Anger assured me. “Where was Mom’s purse when we saw it last?”
I’d never really thought of Riley as a thief—thieves are pretty disgusting—but Anger had a point. Mom and Dad got us into this mess, so it made sense they should pay to get us out.
Anger had the controls, and he led Riley downstairs. Mom was on the phone, and the purse was on the table. It was seriously simple to pull open the purse, slip out a credit card, and run back upstairs. I was pretty impressed. Oh, sure, Honesty Island crumbled to dust the minute we did it, but at this point, what was one less island?
The next morning, instead of loading books in her backpack, Riley packed some clothes. We were serious about running away now, and that had Family Island pretty shaky, but Mom and Dad were kind of getting what they deserved on that score. I mean, really, weren’t they the ones who’d hurt Family Island by moving us away? Yeah, I thought so, too. Sure, Mom and Dad acted all nice and said they’d see us after school. But that only proved how clueless they were! How could they be so cheery? Didn’t they know how much trouble they’d caused by changing everything on us?
Riley didn’t go to school that day. After she packed her backpack (I made sure she had a good selection of outfits—after all, she was going to have to get by with very little for a while), she walked out the front door without saying a single word to Mom and Dad. She then headed for the bus station. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until much later in the afternoon, so we had some time to kill.
Fear was paranoid that we’d get lost once we got to Minnesota, so he steer
ed Riley into the public library to borrow some maps. And while she was there, she decided to flip through books about runaway kids. Again, one of Fear’s brilliant ideas. He wanted to know what was in store for us, and ended up giving himself an anxiety attack.
As freaky as those books were, they didn’t deter Riley from carrying out our plan. She put the books back on the shelf and left the library. Thank goodness. Public places are gross—totally full of germs. I mean, who knows how many people could have picked their noses and wiped their boogers on those chairs and shelves. Blech!
So we resumed our walk to the bus station. It was a grueling, unforgiving, relentless walk. If I hadn’t been convinced before that we needed to get as far away from San Francisco as possible, the walk did it. With all those hills, it was a plod. And then we went through this dirty park. I must have seen bird poop on every bench. And, I don’t know, call me crazy, but back in Minnesota, when you walked by someone, they said hi. They just did, whether or not they knew you. Here? No one. Yeah, yeah, I know Riley had her head down like she didn’t want to talk to anyone, but still—how about some manners, San Francisco?
Worst part? The last few blocks before the station smelled like feet and sewage. Nothing in Minnesota smelled like feet and sewage. We’d be soooo much happier back there.
Mom called as we approached the bus station, but we were not going to answer and deal with that nonsense. Riley kept her head down and her nose as closed as possible, and we finally made it to the bus station…which, of course, smelled like pee. I totally didn’t get it—did people seriously think the corners of the building were an okay place to do their business? What were they, dogs marking their territory?
Riley was in line for tickets when Mom called again. She’d called fifteen times already.
Fear, Anger, and I heard a horrible sound. It hurt my ears—it was all rumbly and screechy and…it was the sound of Family Island collapsing.
“We’re losing the last island!” I screamed.
“This is madness! She shouldn’t run away!” Anger yelled.
“Let’s get that idea out of her head,” I said.
We tried. We seriously tried hard-core. But the idea wouldn’t budge from the console. It wouldn’t unscrew. Worse, it got fire-hot so we couldn’t even touch it! “Now what?” I asked.
Then things got weird.
All the controls started shutting down. This nasty black yuckiness spread over the console. None of us had ever seen anything like it.
“Get that idea out of there!” I screamed.
Anger tried to slam a chair down on the console, but it just bounced off. Fear tried prying the idea out with a crowbar, but the bar just popped out and smacked him in the face…which would have been funny at any other time, but now I was way too freaked out to laugh at his expense.
“How do we stop it?” Fear wailed.
I had an idea. “Make her feel scared! She might change her mind!”
“Yes!” Fear cried. “Brilliant!”
“I know it’s brilliant,” I snapped. “Do it!”
Fear tried. He pushed every button.
“Guys,” he said, and there was something in his voice I’d never heard before. A fear deeper than anything he’d ever shared. “We can’t make Riley feel anything.”
“What have we done?” Anger asked.
I wondered the same thing. We’d messed up big-time, and now Riley was hunched on a bus, running away from the people who loved her.
“That’s it,” Anger said. “It’s over. There’s nothing more to do.”
At that moment, I heard banging on the back window. I ran over to investigate.
“It’s Joy!” I shouted.
She and Sadness were hanging on to the outside of the window! Who knows how they got there, but they wanted in. Just one problem…none of the windows in Headquarters opened.
“Stand back!” Anger roared. He threw a chair at the window, but it still wouldn’t open. These guys and their throwing things—do they really think it’s an effective way to get things done?
“Brilliant,” I chided him.
“Well, what would you do, if you’re so smart!?” he challenged me.
You don’t want to challenge me. Watching him smolder, the little flames flickering on the top of his red, square body, I knew exactly what to do.
“I’d tell you, but you’re too dumb to understand,” I said.
“WHAT?” he spat.
“Of course your tiny brain is confused. Guess I’ll have to dumb it down to your level. Sorry I don’t speak ‘moron’ as well as you, but let me try…”
I made the dumbest face I possibly could. “Duuuuuhhhhh.”
That put him over the edge. His head became a blowtorch of flames as he screamed, so I picked him up and used his head to cut a hole in the glass.
Bingo—Joy and Sadness were in. And, yes, I am brilliant. Thank you.
It was good timing, too, because we all saw what was going down on the view screen in Headquarters. The bus was driving away with Riley on it. I was sure Joy would start driving the console and make everything all right. But Joy did no such thing.
“Sadness,” she said, “it’s up to you.”
And Sadness…Sadness, of all the Emotions, took the console. She drove, and Riley’s face got all misty and, well…sad. A second later, Riley jumped up and told the bus driver to stop so she could get off. Riley went home and poured her heart out to her worried parents, and, I’ve got to say, Mom and Dad did okay. They didn’t do any crazy parent stuff like yell for no reason. They let Riley talk and they cried and hugged, and I wasn’t even grossed out when their faces got puffy from the tears.
That was a bunch of months ago, and now things are different for all of us Emotions. Even Headquarters is different. The core memories are a mix of different colors now—yellow, blue, red, purple, and even a little green for some healthy disgust. I thought the colors wouldn’t blend well, but it totally works. And Joy isn’t so much in charge anymore. We all drive together on a brand-new, upgraded console. Yeah, sure, it’s great, but as I said earlier, driving together means very little personal space. And I need my personal space.
Big picture, though? Things are good. And Riley’s killing it at school. Her friends are massively cool—way cooler than the cool kids I thought she wanted to hang with at first. Plus the house is super cute now with all of Riley’s stuff in it. I’ve made sure she has the right posters on the walls. We even found a pizza place that serves the real deal—nothing green on it whatsoever.
And can you believe Riley’s twelve now? Twelve and fabulous! It’ll be smooth sailing from here. Sure, there are a few things on the new console that we don’t understand yet, like a little warning light labeled PUBERTY. Joy doesn’t think it’s important, though. And, honestly, I’ve taken care of the hard stuff already. Riley is totally set for an awesome life with great friends, awesome parents, a way-cool fashion sense, and impeccable taste in just about everything…thanks to moi!
Oh, man. It’s my turn to tell you our story…the story about moving to San Francisco and how it all got crazy, and Riley was nearly kidnapped and whisked away forever to end up living in a sewer and begging for change on the street…
Okay, I’m running away with myself. I do that sometimes. Sorry. I just get so nervous when I think about what could have happened and how bad it could have been…but again, getting ahead of the story.
I’ll start from the start. Riley’s start. Well, I wasn’t there for the very start. I came a little later, when Riley was a toddler. You wouldn’t believe the disasters she almost got into every day. I was working overtime, I promise you that. She’d just run with complete abandon—if I hadn’t been steering, she’d have slammed into every table leg and tripped over every toy she had. But with me there, it was all good. I’d be steering at the console while I talked it out.
“Very nice,” I’d say. “Okay, looks like you got this. Very good. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…sharp turn…look out! Look out!”
There was always stuff just waiting around to jump out and skin Riley’s knee. But I was a pro at keeping Riley safe. She never got hurt with me around. Well, she did get some scrapes from hockey. I warned everyone time and time again that hockey is a contact sport! People lose teeth playing that game! It was not a safe choice!
I was outvoted, though. And Riley did love hockey, so she was bruised and scraped but happy.
Then came the move to San Francisco, which is a major city where crime rates are far higher than those in our little Minnesota town, and where the percentage of dot-com people pretty much guarantees that cybercrime will be a part of Riley’s life. Oh, and three more things:
Earthquakes—Earthquakes—EARTHQUAKES!
Why would Riley’s parents want to live in a place where the very ground could break open and swallow them up?
I didn’t have a say, though, so we left.
And the result was far, far worse than I’d feared. Dad drove an average of ten miles above the speed limit the entire way to San Francisco, which exponentially increased our chances of vehicular death. He and Mom wouldn’t let Riley open the window because they wanted to keep the air-conditioning in, even though recycled car air increases the likelihood of passing airborne viruses from one passenger to another.
Then we got to our new house, even though “new” was a misnomer, as the house had obviously been lived in by people who clearly didn’t clean up after themselves, and who could have left any number of germs and viruses on every surface. Disgust and I were equally thrilled about that. The floors were also very creaky, and I’m fairly sure the house didn’t have the superstructure to withstand…oh, an earthquake!
Joy tried to make us feel better about the house, but when Disgust gasped, “Is that a dead mouse?!” I knew we were in the wrong place. Dead rodents can carry viruses that are incredibly lethal!
Once again, Joy jumped in and reminded us the place would look better with Riley’s things, and I could imagine that. I could picture her hockey lamp on her bedside table, tethered down so it didn’t fall on Riley’s bed during an earthquake. And I could imagine her posters stuck on the walls with double-sided tape—not pins. Pins could become dangerous projectiles or stick Riley’s fingers while she was using them. The more I thought about it, the less I hyperventilated, and that was good.
