by Elise Allen
Then Dad said the moving van was lost and wouldn’t show up for a couple days.
Back to hyperventilating.
“The van is lost?!” I wailed. “This is the worst day ever. San Francisco is terrible. And Mom and Dad are stressed out—even worse!”
Then there was the pizza debacle. There’s nothing more frightening than finding a small tree on an otherwise perfectly normal plate of food, but that’s exactly what happened. Riley and Mom went to the nearest pizza place and found broccoli on the pizza. I was terrified. If a pizza could have broccoli, it could have anything. It could have anchovies. Or liverwurst. Or roadkill.
Again, Joy calmed the rest of us down. She’s really good at that. That’s why she’s usually the one driving. She showed us memories of Riley and our trip, and I was especially calmed when I remembered that Riley, Mom, and Dad all stayed securely belted into their seats the whole trip. That was important. But when the memory we were watching turned blue, I froze.
Not literally. It wasn’t cold or anything, although there is a lot of fog in San Francisco, which is both cold and dangerous. What I’m saying is that I froze with fright because I’ve never seen a memory turn blue before. And I don’t know about you, but I prefer only seeing things that I have seen before. That way I know if they’re good or bad. New things are way too unpredictable and are far too likely to be dangerous.
I turned around and saw that Sadness was touching the memory. “She did something to the memory!” I said.
Joy did the right thing. She stepped in and took the memory away from Sadness, but the sphere stayed blue.
“Oh…change it back, Joy!” I urged her.
She tried to rub the blue off but couldn’t, which meant the memory would stay sad forever.
Sadness never had that kind of power before. What did it mean? Had Sadness become a monster? Would she start turning all of Riley’s memories blue? Would she turn us blue?
It seemed to me that Sadness was suddenly very dangerous. And she proved it only a minute later. Riley was about to do one of her favorite things…slide down a railing! I know, it’s totally unsafe and not on my approved activities list. So I was secretly pleasantly surprised when Riley suddenly decided to forego the railing and walk down the stairs. But it wasn’t my doing.
“Wait, what?” Joy asked. “What happened?”
I saw it at the same time Joy did. A core memory—one of the main memories that makes Riley who she is and powers her Islands of Personality—rolled on the floor and stopped at Joy’s feet!
“A core memory!” I screamed.
“Oh, no,” Joy gasped.
And it wasn’t just any core memory—it was the one that powered Goofball Island, which had gone dark. That’s why Riley hadn’t slid. She couldn’t be a goofball without Goofball Island. And even though I appreciated that she’d be safer if she never acted like a goofball, that wasn’t Riley!
I watched Joy run to the core memory holder. Sadness was standing next to it.
“Sadness!” Joy snapped. “What are you doing?”
“It looked like one was crooked,” Sadness said, “so I opened it and then it fell out! I…”
Joy got the memory back in place and Goofball Island lit up again. Riley happily slid down the railing, but I was worried. Why was Sadness messing with important core memories? She wouldn’t stop, either! When Joy asked why she did it, Sadness said, “I wanted maybe to touch one.” And even as she said it, she reached out to a core memory and it started to turn blue! She was tainting the core memory! Who can function with tainted memories?
I was not okay with that. Not okay at all. I figured it was something about San Francisco. Maybe Sadness was allergic to the place. Maybe that’s why she was acting so strange.
San Francisco wasn’t suiting Mom and Dad, either. They both sounded so upset when they talked about the missing moving van or Dad’s work…I didn’t like it. I didn’t like staying in Riley’s new room with the ceiling that sloped down like a snowy mountain right before an avalanche. And I didn’t like sleeping on the creaky floor in a thin sleeping bag that had been in storage for so long it was probably teeming with bedbugs. Did you know that mattresses get heavier over time because they fill with dust mites and dead skin? It’s true! And I bet the same thing happens with sleeping bags. We were probably cuddled up with hordes of mites, all of which were just waiting to jump out and bite us in the middle of the night. And what about the weird glow of lights zipping across the room? Were they just cars passing by on the street, or were they something more sinister? And what about all the weird night noises? How did we know San Francisco didn’t have bears?
“This move has been a bust,” Anger said that first night, and I agreed.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you guys!” I said. “There are at least thirty-seven things for Riley to be scared of right now!”
“The smell alone is enough to make her gag,” said Disgust.
“Look, I get it,” said Joy. “But we’ve been through worse! Tell you what: let’s make a list of all the things Riley should be HAPPY about.”
Well, none of us could think of a single happy thing. But Joy wouldn’t give up.
“Okay, I admit it,” she said. “We had a rough start. But think of all the good things that—”
“No, Joy,” Anger snapped. “There’s absolutely no reason for Riley to be happy right now. Let us handle this.”
“I say we skip school tomorrow and lock ourselves in the bedroom,” I said. It seemed like a great idea to me. Then Riley’s bedroom door creaked open. Was it a psycho killer? The world’s biggest dust mite?
No, it was Mom. She came in to thank Riley for being such a happy kid and making the move easier.
So I guess Joy knew what she was doing, even if I couldn’t always see it right away. But we were on board and ready to support her. From then on, we’d be Team Happy! (Yep, I came up with the name by myself…not to brag or anything.)
The next day was the first day at the new school, and Joy had jobs for all of us. Mine was making a list of the possible negative outcomes on the first day of school, but Joy didn’t realize I’d been working on that since the moment we had left Minnesota. I was on page fifty, and I really felt like I had only scratched the surface.
Oooh, scratched. Scratching. Itching. Hives! We could get hives on the first day of school!
I added that to the list. I felt pretty prepared, but when it came to the moment to walk into school, I lost my nerve.
“Are you sure we want to do this?” I asked Joy.
“In we go!” she demanded.
“Okaaaay!” I agreed. “Going in! Yes.”
By the time we got to class, I was ready to make my full report to Joy. “Almost finished with the potential disasters,” I told her. “Worst scenario is either quicksand, spontaneous combustion, or getting called on by the teacher. So as long as none of those happen…”
“Okay, everybody,” Riley’s teacher said. “We have a new student in class today.”
“Are you kidding me?” I wailed. “Out of the gate? This is not happening!”
“Riley,” the teacher kept going, “would you like to tell us something about yourself?”
“Nooooo!” I screamed. “Pretend we can’t speak English!”
Joy didn’t listen to me. She took the controls, and she was going to get Riley through it just fine. At least, it seemed that way. Joy even took out a memory for Riley to think about to help her talk about home, which was really nice. It was a memory of Riley skating with Mom and Dad on our favorite frozen lake. As I watched Riley handle everything on the view screen in Headquarters, I almost forgot how terrified I was.
Then the image on the screen turned blue.
Uh-oh. Bad. Very bad. And wrong. What was going on? We all turned around and saw that Sadness had her hand on the memory. I had wondered up until then if Sadness had undergone some horrific transformation. Now I knew for sure she had turned. Sadness had become a MEMORY-CHANGING MO
NSTER!
Riley’s happy memory from home had turned completely blue and sad, and the more Riley thought about it, the more upset she got.
“Get it out of there, Joy!” I demanded.
Joy tried to wrench the memory from the projector, but she couldn’t. Meanwhile, everyone in class was staring at Riley like she was from another planet!
“Did you see that look?” I shouted frantically. “They’re judging us!”
Disgust, Anger, and I all tried to help Joy remove the memory, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like Sadness had put some kind of superglue spell on it.
“Everything’s different now,” Riley said as she kept talking to her class. “Since we moved…”
And then I saw it. The worst thing imaginable.
“Oh, no!” I wailed. “We’re crying at school!”
I ran in wild circles. If I kept moving, maybe I could run so fast I could turn back time and none of this would have happened. The only thing that made me stop was the sound of a new memory sphere rolling into Headquarters.
It was a blue memory. And it was rolling toward the core memory holder.
“It’s a core memory!” I gasped.
We’d never had a blue core memory. I could tell Joy didn’t like it any more than I did, because she fought to keep it from getting into the holder while Sadness fought to get it in the holder.
I hate fighting. Fighting leads to injury, which leads to infection, which leads to death. But I wanted Joy to win this one. Instead, nobody won, because as they fought, they jostled the core memory holder and all five core memories…
I can’t even say it. It’s too terrible to even put into print.
Okay, I’ll say it, but I warn you, I’m writing this with my eyes closed so I don’t have to see the words.
ALL FIVE CORE MEMORIES SPILLED OUT!
Translation? ARMAGEDDON!
Everything that happened next was a blur, mainly because I went into a semi-unconscious state to deal with the stress. I know Joy went after the yellow core memories, and I heard Sadness shouting about her blue core memory, and then there was some accident with the vacuum tube, and then my entire life flashed before my eyes, and then I heard some more shouts and screams, and then I nearly passed out so I had to put my head between my knees for a second…
…and then it was all over.
Sadness, Joy, and the core memories had been sucked away.
Without the core memories to power them, the Islands of Personality went dark.
Life as we knew it had come to an abrupt end.
I did the only reasonable thing to do. I curled into a ball, shut my eyes, and wished the day away.
I felt very good about that decision. It seemed like the mature, sane way to handle things.
Anger and Disgust, however, didn’t agree. They got me to my feet and, after Riley sat back down in her seat, I started driving the console. Riley slouched in her chair and hid behind a big text book. I wanted her to stay there for the rest of the day. Well, maybe not there, but possibly under her desk, which would give her protection in case of an earthquake—but apparently we had to get up and get through the rest of the school day without Joy’s help!
Personally, I think we did okay. Riley was able to avoid interaction with all the kids and faculty—the last thing we wanted to do was talk to someone after what had happened. She wisely walked down the middle of each hallway, so the lockers wouldn’t fall on her if there was an earthquake. She survived lunch without getting poisoned. She was able to find the one stall in the bathroom that was relatively clean. And she used that antibacterial stuff every time she went back to her locker (which had cobwebs in the corners—cobwebs).
Once school was over and we were away from all those prying kid eyes, I felt a little better. Well, not better—I actually felt worse than ever—but I felt responsible. Without Joy, the three of us left inside Headquarters had to step it up. And I, as the most brilliant of the three remaining Emotions, just happened to have a genius idea.
“Until Joy gets back, we just do what Joy would do.”
We’d been with Riley a very long time. We could handle this. When Mom told us about a junior hockey league in San Francisco and asked Riley what she thought, I gave some sage advice.
“You pretend to be Joy,” I said as I pushed Disgust up to the console.
She rolled her eyes at me, then put her hands on the controls.
“Won’t it be great to be back out on the ice?” Mom asked Riley.
“Oh, yeah,” Riley said, rolling her eyes. “That sounds fantastic.”
“What was that?” I scolded her. “That wasn’t anything like Joy.”
“Uh, because I’m not Joy,” she said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” I shot back, which I guess was the wrong thing to say because then she pushed me to the console and said, “You pretend to be Joy.”
“What?” I said. “Uh…okay.”
I know I said I was feeling responsible and all, but running the console under direct questioning from Mom was not my area of expertise. I tried, though. I took the controls, and when Mom asked about the first day of school, I tried to give as straightforward and brave an answer as I could.
“It was fine, I guess,” I had Riley say. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, very smooth,” Disgust said. “That was just like Joy.”
She didn’t have to be so mean about it. I was trying.
When Riley’s parents had more questions, Anger took the console. I have to say, he was the least Joy-like of all of us.
“Riley, I do not like this new attitude,” Dad said in response to Anger’s steering.
“Oh, I’ll show you attitude, old man,” Anger said.
“No!” I warned him. “No, no, no. Breathe.”
Anger was leading us down the path to “Getting in Trouble” and, along the way, we’d probably make a stop at “Disappointed in You.” I didn’t want to be anywhere near that horror.
“What is your problem?” Riley shouted at Dad. “Just leave me alone.”
Uh-oh.
A minute later, Dad had sent Riley to her room.
What were we thinking?! There was no way we could handle being Riley’s entire personality! Our whole world was going down in flames! Flames!
When Dad came to visit Riley before bed, I was sure he’d see right through us and realize our desperate state. But he didn’t. He tried to make things better by acting goofy with Riley. Normally I’d think that was cute. This time, though, it wasn’t cute at all, because Riley couldn’t play along. Goofball Island was down. It was dark. So Riley didn’t respond to Dad’s silliness. She just lay still. And that was totally unlike her, which gave me a very bad feeling. I knew something terrible would happen…and it did.
Goofball Island crumbled to the ground.
“Oh, Joy, where are you?” I cried.
It was the beginning of the end. Sinking into despair seemed like a sound idea, but Disgust and Anger were able to keep going, so I did, too.
I even got excited when Meg chatted with Riley. The two had been friends and hockey teammates forever. Maybe talking to Meg would make everything all better!
Then Meg said something about a new girl on the hockey team. And how cool she was.
“A new girl?” I screeched. “Meg has a new friend already?”
If Meg could dump us, anyone could dump us. Riley might not have any more friends ever! How could we know anyone was a true friend if the one we’d thought we could count on could disappear that easily?
If Meg could replace us that quickly…maybe she had never been a friend at all!
The knowledge hit me like a ton of bricks, which was pretty much what Friendship Island became as it crumbled to pieces and disappeared into the Memory Dump.
After the Meg disaster, waking up to face another day of school seemed like a very bad idea. Why even try to go and make new friends when they’d only dump us one day? At first I wanted Riley to stay under the covers and play sick so Mo
m would take care of her, but then I thought about how the power of ideas is very strong, and if Riley said she was sick, she might become sick, and then we’d have to deal with a cold on top of everything else!
So we went to school. Disgust had Riley’s nose in a book most of the day to show she didn’t need anyone else. That took care of the friend thing. And to make her seem even less approachable, Anger had caused a bit of a meltdown in computer class. The other kids must’ve thought Riley was nuts!
But, honestly, none of this really concerned me too much. I was preoccupied with all the potential disasters at this school! At one point Riley noticed that one of the fluorescent lights in math class was flickering. Not only did it give the whole room a creepy vibe, it was really bad for our eyesight. No one should have to multiply fractions in poor lightning conditions.
And then there was the girl who was sitting beside us in history class. She was secretly painting her nails an awful bloody red color under her desk. The nail polish she was using smelled terrible! Those fumes, especially in an enclosed classroom, were sure to be toxic! Riley wanted to open a window, but thought it was best not to draw attention to herself. So she just sat there inhaling the formaldehyde, which was probably killing tens of thousands of brain cells every second.
And just when we thought we had escaped the dangers of the day, Riley spotted the most horrific thing of all! A janitor was waxing the floor. Waxing it! Do you know how slippery floors are when they’re waxed? She could easily fall and break a leg just getting to class!
I was thrilled to get out of that place, but after school we had even more problems. Mom took Riley to tryouts for a hockey league. Riley still had Hockey Island, but without the core memory, it wasn’t powered up. There was no way she’d be able to play the way she used to. I was terrified of what might happen. I didn’t even want to imagine losing another island. I knew I had to do something. Then I had a brilliant idea!
