Driven by Emotions

by Elise Allen

  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?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Atta girl,” said Joy.

  That is why sometimes I thought Joy didn’t like me very much.

  I tried to stay in my Circle of Sadness. I really did. I had never disobeyed Joy before, but…

  You know how I said it was like the core memories wanted me to touch them? Well, as Riley went through her first day of school, I got that feeling again, more and more. And it wasn’t just the core memories—I got the feeling that I was supposed to be steering. That even though Joy said this was a happy day…it wasn’t. It was sad. And if it was sad, I needed to be at the controls.

  Still, I stayed put while Riley got to school, while she walked into the building, while she sat at her desk. I even stayed still when the teacher asked her to introduce herself, and when Joy called up a memory for Riley to describe to all the other kids.

  The memory was of Riley and her family skating together. It was a golden, happy memory, but it pulled me like a magnet because it needed me. It needed to be blue. It needed to be a little sad. After all, Riley wouldn’t be able to skate like that anymore with Mom and Dad. They lived in San Francisco now, where it didn’t even snow. So while the other Emotions were watching Riley on the big screen, I tiptoed to the memory sphere and touched it.

  On the big screen, the image turned blue. Riley’s voice got sad and small.

  I felt awful when Joy spun around and saw me touching the memory. She looked really upset.

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

  “Oh, yeah, I know,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “Get back in your circle,” she told me.

  I didn’t. I didn’t want to be back in my circle. I wanted to be near the memory, even though Joy was trying to eject it.

  The memory wouldn’t come loose. It stayed put and it stayed sad, and Riley got more and more upset as she thought about it. All the other Emotions got worried because Riley sounded like she was about to cry, and the kids in her class started whispering about her, but was it really so bad that they knew Riley was unhappy? I didn’t think so.

  As the other Emotions tried to remove the memory from the projector, I walked over to the console and began driving. That’s when a new memory sphere was created. It was a bright blue memory of that very moment, and it rolled into Headquarters and toward the core memory holder.

  It was a core memory. A sad core memory. I’d made a core memory of my very own.

  “No, wait…” Joy said. “Stop it…no! Aaah!”

  She ran to the core memory holder and popped it up so my core memory bounced off the edge and wouldn’t go in. But it was supposed to be there. What Joy had done wasn’t fair. Then Joy tried to vacuum up the memory, but that would have been even less right. Joy might not have liked the memory, but it was a real core memory. She couldn’t just vacuum it away.

  “Joy, no,” I tried to stop her. I grabbed the memory. “That’s a core memory!”

  “Hey! Stop it!” Joy said as she tried to pull it away from me.

  As we were playing tug-of-war with the blue core memory, we bumped into the open core memory holder and all five of the yellow core memories tumbled to the ground.

  Everyone gasped, and while Joy raced around for the five yellow core memories, I grabbed my blue one. It was special to me, and I wanted it where it belonged, in the holder. But then Joy lunged for it, and it slipped out of my hands and into the vacuum tube. I tried to get it again, but Joy tried to block me, and then she tripped, and then the core memories spilled out of her arms. It was all really confusing. One minute Joy and I were fighting over the core memories, and the next minute those memories, plus Joy and myself, were sucked up into the vacuum tube.

  It was very disorienting for a while then. I was in the tube, I was moving quickly…and then I fell and landed right beside Joy.

  Joy immediately got up and began scrambling around. She was looking for her core memories, I guess, and she found all five. Then she looked around to see where we were.

  “Long Term Memory,” she said.

  I followed her gaze. We were close to Goofball Island, but it was dark and silent. All the Personality Islands would be dark now, because the core memories that powered them weren’t in their holder. “This is bad,” I said.

  But Joy said she could fix everything. We just had to get back to Headquarters, plug in the core memories, and Riley would be back to normal.

  If only it could be that easy. Then something horrible dawned on me. Since Joy wasn’t in Headquarters, there was no way Riley could be happy! “We gotta get you back up there,” I told Joy.

  We headed for the bridge to Goofball Island. From there we could cross the lightline back to Headquarters. But once we got to Goofball and took a look at that very thin lightline that spanned across the deep abyss of the Memory Dump, we had second thoughts about our plan. “If we fall, we’ll be forgotten forever!” I told Joy.

  “We have to do this, for Riley. Just follow my footsteps,” Joy said.

  It was like walking on a tightrope! I just knew something bad was going to happen. Joy was going to drop one of the core memories, or I was going to stumble and fall into the Memory Dump myself. I’ve never had good balance. I usually trip over my own feet and land on my face. That’s why I just lie down flat on my face on my own. I keep myself from falling that way.

  And sure enough, something bad did happen. As we were walking along the lightline, I heard a terrible noise, and then Goofball Island and the lightline that we were standing on began to crumble!

  “Go back! Run!” yelled Joy.

  We raced as fast as we could back across the bridge. We made it back to the Long Term Memory cliff seconds before all of Goofball Island collapsed into the Memory Dump.

  “We lost Goofball Island. That means Riley can lose Friendship, and Hockey, and Honesty, and Family! You can fix this, right Joy?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Joy replied. “But we have to try.”

  She then came up with a new plan. The sky had just become dark, which meant Riley had just gone to sleep. That would give us time to walk to Friendship Island and cross the lightline from there. But I looked out at Friendship Island and knew we’d never make it. It was impossible. I wanted to give up and fall on the ground.

  “No, no, no, don’t obsess over the weight of life’s problems,” Joy told me.

  But it was too late. I fell flat on my face.

  “Uhhh, Sadness, we don’t have time for this,” Joy said as she walked toward the winding Long Term Memory shelves. She was going to walk through Long Term to get to Friendship Island.

  “Wait! Joy, you could get lost in there!” I cried.

  “Think positive!” she said.

  I was thinking positive. I was positive that she was going to get lost in there. I knew from all those mind manuals I read back in Headquarters that Long Term was just one endless warren of corridors and shelves. When I told Joy about the mind manuals and how I knew the way back to Headquarters, she got really excited. She called me the “Official Mind Map.”

  “I wish I had a name like that!” said Joy. “How does it feel?”

  “Good.”

  Joy told me to lead the way. And I was going to, but there was just one problem. I was too sad to walk. I needed at least a few hours to pull myself out of my downward spiral.

  Apparently, Joy couldn’t wait that long. She grabbed one of my legs and dragged me into the maze of Long Term Memory shelves. It actually felt kind of nice, especially since I could run my hand along the bottom row of memories as I slid past them. They turned a really pretty shade of blue when I touc
hed them. I liked it a lot, but I was glad Joy was facing forward and couldn’t see. I didn’t think she’d approve.

  “Which way?” Joy asked when we came to a crossing. “Left?”

  “Right.”

  She turned right.

  “No, I mean go left,” I told her. “I said left was right. Like ‘correct.’”

  “Okay! Here we go. This is working!” said Joy, enthusiastic as always.

  But then hours passed…

  “This is not working,” she said.

  I continued giving her directions. “Just another right…and a left. Then another left…and a right…”

  “Are you sure you know where we’re going? Because we seem to be walking away from Headquarters—”

  Joy paused and looked up. The sky was bright again, which meant Riley was awake. She was distracted for a moment and dropped the core memories. My immediate reaction was to reach out for them.

  “Ah, ah, ah, don’t touch, remember?” Joy told me. “If you touch them, they stay sad!”

  “Oh, sorry, I won’t,” I said.

  Then Joy noticed the long trail of blue memory spheres on the bottom row of all the shelves we had passed. “Ugh, I can’t take more of this,” she muttered.

  Then Joy heard some voices and she ran off. I knew from my manual reading that the voices belonged to Forgetters. Those are the Mind Workers who go through the Long Term Memory shelves and send all the memories Riley doesn’t need anymore down to the dump, where the memories fade away forever. That was sad to think about, so I let Joy go to the Forgetters on her own. But when I heard a loud, terrible noise, I got up and walked toward it. Joy had done the same thing. I found her staring out past the Long Term Memory shelves to the place where Friendship Island was breaking into pieces and toppling to the ground.

  “Oh, Riley loved that one. And now it’s gone,” I said. “Good-bye friendship, hello loneliness.”

  Joy pointed to Hockey Island, which was the closest island, even though it was very far away. “We’ll just have to go the long way.”