Driven by Emotions

by Elise Allen

  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.

  Nope, they would not.

  The next day was the first day of school, and it started off disastrous because Joy pranced around playing her accordion, an instrument that is, by definition, a crime against music. Then she started doling out jobs. Mine was to unload daydreams Joy had ordered in case things got slow in class. Want to know what my dream was? That I’d never have to see another “flying pony” daydream. Although if school ended up being really boring and useless, which it probably would be, one of those ridiculous ponies might actually come in handy.

  Riley got to school and it seemed to go okay at first. She got to class, sat down, blended in…all good. Then the teacher, who I swear must have run a prison camp before she earned her teaching credentials, thought it would be a fine idea to have the new kid get up and talk to everyone. Fine. Joy handled it and Riley started out okay. We were all watching her on the big screen when, out of nowhere, the screen started to turn blue. I turned around and saw Sadness touching the memory Joy had recalled for Riley to talk about.

  The gall of Sadness! What right did she have to change memories? Joy grabbed the sphere, but it wouldn’t come out of its spot, which meant Riley couldn’t stop thinking about it. And since the memory was sad now, Riley got more and more upset.

  Well done, Sadness. Way to ruin the already horrible institution of school.

  Fear, Disgust, Joy, and I all tried to dislodge the memory, but it wouldn’t move. What did move was a new memory that rolled into Headquarters. It was a miserable blue memory that rolled toward the core memory holder.

  You know what that means, right? It was a sad core memory! Imagine the island that it would create. Chronic Depression Island, maybe, or Cry Me to Sleep Island. Oh, what a lovely place it would be. Who knows…it might even come with an ocean of tears!

  Naturally, Joy tried to keep the memory out of the core memory holder. Sadness tried to get it in. Fighting ensued, but it wasn’t the good kind of fighting with wrestlers in an arena body-slamming one another. It was a pitiful kind of fighting that only succeeded in dumping all five core memories onto the floor when Sadness and Joy bumped the holder.

  That’s right, you heard me. They dumped the core memories. And then those two geniuses managed to get themselves and the memories sucked up into a vacuum tube and disappeared, leaving me, Fear, and Disgust to pick up the slack.

  Oh, yeah, and with the core memories gone, all the Islands of Personality went dark. Nice, right?

  So the three of us got Riley through the rest of the school day. Let me tell you a little bit about Riley’s new school. First of all, whoever decorated the school did so blindfolded. The color scheme in the halls was a mix of pastel green and yellow. Riley overheard one of the teachers calling it “soothing.” Soothing? It looked like someone threw up banana all over a meadow. You know what else wasn’t soothing? Looking out the window and seeing nothing but thick gray fog. You know what was outside the windows in Minnesota? Sky! Sun! White puffy clouds! Here our entire building may as well have been stuffed inside a pillow.

  Then lunch. Don’t even get me started on lunch. The motto for San Francisco should be “Peace, Love, and Broccoli.” Massive, steaming piles of broccoli were spooned out onto all the kids’ plates. Even if you didn’t take the broccoli, you might as well have, because the smell of broccoli was everywhere! The tortilla soup smelled like broccoli, the fruit cup smelled like broccoli…Riley even went to check out the optional peanut butter and jelly table, and the peanut butter smelled like broccoli.

  I couldn’t have been happier when school was over, but going home and having dinner with Mom and Dad wasn’t much better. Instead of letting Riley enjoy her meal in peace, Mom was yammering on about some junior hockey league.

  “Hockey?!” I blurted. I mean come on—like hockey was the most important thing right now. It didn’t even make the top thousand. Fear and Disgust tried to handle the conversation, but Mom knew something was weird.

  “So,” she said in this fake-casual tone of voice, “how was the first day of school?”

  “She’s probing us,” I warned.

  Fear gave some kind of half-witted answer, but that just brought Dad into the conversation. Soon he was probing, too, and exchanging knowing little glances with Mom. I hate those knowing little glances.

  “Move,” I said, pushing Fear out of the way. “I’ll be Joy.” I took the controls on the console and dialed up Riley’s snark factor.

  “School was great,” she sneered, “all right?”

  “Riley,” Mom asked, “is everything okay?”

  Right, because Riley can’t be anything but sunny all the time, and if she’s not, something has to be seriously wrong. Which it was, of course, but Mom didn’t know that for sure.

  “Uggghhhh,” Riley groaned.

  “Riley, I do not like this new attitude,” Dad said.

  Attitude? He thought that was an attitude? “Oh, I’ll show you attitude, old man,” I said.

  “What is your problem?” Riley shouted at Dad. “Just leave me alone.”

  Dad thought he’d take the offensive after that. “Listen, young lady,” he said, “I don’t know where this disrespectful attitude is coming from…”

  “You want a piece of this, Pops?” I challenged him from the control panel. “Come and get it!” I pushed two levers forward as far as they could go, and Riley glared into Dad’s eyes.

  “Yeah?” she prodded him. “Well…well…”

  I pushed down on a third lever and screamed until my head burst into flames.

  “Just shut up!” Riley yelled.

  Atta girl.

  Yeah, Riley got sent to her room, but I still felt good about it. Dad must have known we were right, too, because he came up later to try and make things better. Unfortunately, he started making monkey noises, which would have made Riley laugh if Goofball Island was operational—but it wasn’t. Riley couldn’t be a goofball, so she just shut her mouth and ignored him, which was so unlike Riley that it made Goofball Island crumble to dust.

  But, hey, we could do without Goofball if we had to. We had other islands. At least we did until later, when Riley’s “friend” Meg called her on her laptop. Did you note the quotation marks around the word “friend”? Yeah, that was on purpose. This “friend” had the nerve to talk to Riley about a new friend. Actually, make that a new BFF, who was so in sync with Meg on the hockey rink that they could practically read one another’s minds!

  “You like to read minds, Meg?” I roared. “I got something for you to read right here!”

  I took the controls, and Riley slammed the laptop shut. Meg must have been stunned. It was totally satisfying. And if that was what made Friendship Island crumble, then it wasn’t my fault, it was that little traitor Meg’s.

  Apparently Fear, Disgust, and I were playing a game of Knock Down the Personality Islands, but again, not our fault. We weren’t the ones who were supposed to be in charge, and we certainly weren’t the ones who let the core memories out of their holder. We were only playing the hand we were dealt, which is exactly what we kept on doing the next day at school.

  For the most part, the day was tolerable. Riley pretended to read a book so everyone would just leave her alone. And if anyone was considering coming up to Riley that day, they got the message to back off after computer class. That’s when Riley got upset. Hey, you would, too, if you had to deal with a swirling rainbow of doom on your computer screen! ARGHH­HH­HH­H! Is anything more frustrating than that? Anyway, the other kids gave us a wide berth after that one, which was fine with me because I was not in the mood for anyone getting in Riley’s face and pretending to be all nicey-
nicey-what’s-wrong. They might seem like they were being friendly, but they’d only be stringing us along until they found someone better, just like Meg had.

  After school that day, Mom took Riley to tryouts for a hockey league. I knew it was a terrible idea, and I made sure Riley kept a grousy look on her face so Mom knew it, but it didn’t help. Fear had this whackadoodle idea that a hockey tryout could go just fine even with Hockey Island dark. He recalled all of Riley’s hockey memories and tried to use them as replacement core memories.

  Hey, fine, I’m a team player. I didn’t think it would work, but I went along with the plan. As Riley started playing, I tried shoving the memories into the core memory holder, struggling to make them fit. But then one of the memory spheres flew out of the holder and rocketed right into my gut. OOF!

  While I was killing myself to make Hockey Island work, Riley was getting pulverized on the ice. And her ridiculous coach started taunting her, pushing her to play better, like she wasn’t doing the best she could.

  Not acceptable. Let Disgust and Fear shove ill-fitting spheres into the core memory holder. I was going to drive the console. Riley wasn’t going to put up with this nonsense anymore. As I pounded some buttons and jammed a lever, Riley threw her stick on the ice and skated off the rink. Then she huffed to Mom that she was done and stormed out of the building.

  Did Hockey Island crumble? Yes, it did. Was it at all my doing? No, Your Honor, it was not.

  The three of us were on a sinking ship, and things were only getting worse. So that night, I tried to take charge. “Well, why don’t we quit standing around and do something?” I asked Disgust and Fear.

  Fear said we should quit, but he just meant he wanted to suck himself into a tube like Sadness and Joy had. He didn’t realize what he was actually saying. I did, though, and it reminded me of an idea that we had tucked away for occasions just like this one.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Wait a minute!”

  I rummaged through the idea bulbs until I found what I was looking for. “Aha!” I cried.

  “What is it?” Fear asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just the best idea ever,” I replied as I held up the idea bulb for everyone to see. “All the good core memories were made in Minnesota. Ergo, we go back to Minnesota and make more. Ta-da!”

  “You can’t be serious,” Fear said.

  Fear clearly didn’t know me at all. “Hey,” I said. “Our life was perfect until Mom and Dad decided to move to San Fran Stinktown.”

  “But, it’s just so…drastic!” said Fear.

  “Need I remind you of how great things were there?” I asked, though apparently I did. Fear was completely clueless. “Our room? Our backyard? Our friends?”

  Fear and Disgust weren’t sold, which made no earthly bit of sense to me, but I told them we could sleep on it. “Because, hey,” I said sarcastically, “I’m sure jolly, fun-filled times are just around the corner.”

  I don’t know what the heck happened that night. All I know is I was asleep, enjoying a moment of peace and quiet, and the next thing I knew, Fear was screaming and Riley was bolting awake in bed. And when Riley was up, we were all up. I stormed into Headquarters from the break room, cranky from the lack of sleep, and there was Fear, huddled under the console in a trembling ball of humiliation. Disgust asked him what was going on, and he started babbling about half a dog, no pants, and Riley’s old imaginary friend Bing Bong….

  “You idiot!” I yelled. “It was a dream! This is ridiculous; we can’t even get a good night’s sleep anymore. Time to take action.” I grabbed the idea bulb I’d found earlier. “Stupid Mom and Dad,” I grumbled. “If they hadn’t moved us, none of this would have happened.” I took the idea to the console and held it up. “Who’s with me?”

  Fear just babbled, but Disgust gave the go-ahead. That was good enough for me. I plugged the idea into the console. Almost immediately, Riley got out of bed and turned on her computer.

  “She took it,” I said. “There’s no turning back.”

  Disgust, in her infinite wisdom, asked how we’d get to Minnesota from San Francisco.

  “Well,” I said, “why don’t we go to the elephant lot and rent an elephant?”

  “That sounds nice,” said Fear.

  “We’re taking the bus, nitwit!” I snapped.

  I watched as Riley checked the schedule on her computer. “There’s a bus leaving tomorrow,” I noted. “Perfect.”

  Then Disgust asked about money for the ticket. Like I hadn’t already thought of that.

  “Mom’s purse,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t,” she gasped, but I assured her that, indeed, I would. I even called up a memory so we could recall where Mom had left her purse—downstairs. “Mom and Dad got us into this mess,” I reminded Disgust and Fear. “They can pay to get us out.”

  Sneaking downstairs and “borrowing” the credit card was shockingly easy. Watching Honesty Island topple was a lot harder, though. But I knew once we got back to Minnesota we’d be able to build new Islands of Personality, and Riley would be herself again.

  Fear got nervous the next morning as we were getting ready to go, but I wasn’t going to hear any excuses. If we wanted to make life better, we had to do something. I took the console, and Riley was soon filling her backpack with clothes. Then we walked out the front door and took our first steps to freedom. I steered Riley through some nasty parts of town. Then Fear took over and led us to a library, which was a big waste of time. He said he wanted to be prepared for the worst. But we just ended up reading lame books about lame runaways. Riley was so much stronger and smarter than those kids. She’d be fine! I’d make sure of it.

  I took the console again, and we resumed our journey to the bus station. Riley just kept her head down and kept walking. She looked tough—no one was going to mess with her!

  Then Mom called Riley’s cell phone, but Riley refused to answer.

  We were on a mission, and we were going to see it through. I was sure of that right up until we got close to the ticket booth at the bus station. Then I started thinking of Mom…and Dad…and how much they’d miss us…and how awful it would be for Riley to be alone.

  “This is madness!” I yelled. “What are we thinking? She shouldn’t run away.”

  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.