Driven by Emotions

by Elise Allen

  The three of us ran to the gates of the Subconscious with Jangles right behind us. He destroyed the big gate with his mallet, and the guards were so scared they ran away. That left us free to run back up the big stairway to Dream Productions, where they were still shooting Riley’s dream.

  Jangles rammed down the studio wall with his mallet, then leaned into the camera and grinned. “WHO’S THE BIRTHDAY GIRL?!” he roared.

  I peeked around him and saw the Sleep Indicator go all the way to AWAKE. It worked! Joy and I were so happy we did a little dance. Just a short one—dancing makes my feet hurt. Then we ran to the Train of Thought and caught the very last car just as it was pulling away.

  “Guess who’s on their way to Headquarters?!” Joy cried. She grabbed me and spun me around, which was fun, but it made me a little dizzy. I still liked it, though.

  “We are!” I replied. I could see Headquarters up in the distance. It was still pretty far, but the train would get us there. In the meantime, we were surrounded by all the memories in the train car, and that was nice. Especially for Bing Bong. He hadn’t spent time with Riley in a while, so he liked looking at her memories.

  “Hey, that was a good idea,” Joy said to me. “About scaring Riley awake. You’re not so bad.”

  I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like Joy was saying something nice to me. “Really?” I asked.

  “Nice work,” said Joy.

  I smiled. I had done good. And Joy thought so, too. She’d never liked anything I’d done before. I felt kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

  Then Bing Bong showed us a memory sphere he’d found. In it, Riley’s hockey teammates were holding her in the air. Joy smiled because she said she loved this one.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I love that one, too.”

  That made Joy happy. “Atta girl!” she cried. “Now you’re getting it!”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “It was the day the Prairie Dogs lost the big play-off game. Riley missed the winning shot. She felt awful. She wanted to quit.”

  Joy looked disappointed.

  “Sorry. I can’t help it,” I said. I had really thought Joy finally liked me, and now she didn’t all over again.

  “I’ll tell ya what,” said Joy, smiling. “We’ll keep working on it together. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I promised myself I would, and I’d work hard on it, too. Then Joy would be happier with me. I saw Joy put the memory in her bag with the core memories and thought maybe I’d look at it again later and try to see it the way she did.

  All of a sudden, we heard a terrible noise and the whole train shuddered. We looked around. Honesty Island was sinking! And it was ruining the train tracks! They toppled, and the train plummeted down. It happened too fast for me to be scared; I was just sad I wouldn’t have the time to practice being positive like I’d promised Joy.

  We crashed into the Long Term Memory cliffs, right at the edge of a steep drop-off. The train slipped down and crashed into the dump, but Joy, Bing Bong, and I were able to cling to the ledge and scramble up. We looked down and saw the train falling farther and farther away.

  “That was our way home!” Joy wailed. “We lost another island…what is happening?”

  A Mind Worker answered. “Haven’t you heard? Riley is running away.”

  Running away? That was the saddest news I had ever heard. We had to do something about it.

  “Joy,” I said, “if we hurry, we can still stop her.”

  “Family Island,” Joy said. “Let’s go!”

  She was right. Family Island was the last one left. If we got there, we could make our way to Headquarters. We ran across the bridge to the island, but it started to shake and crumble.

  “Joy!” I cried, trying to stop her before she went too far ahead. “Joy! It’s too dangerous! We won’t make it in time!”

  “But that’s our only way back!” she shouted.

  Actually, it wasn’t. At that moment, one of the shelves in Long Term broke, exposing a recall tube that sent memories back up to Headquarters.

  “We can get recalled!” I said.

  As we ran toward the tube, Family Island rumbled and a huge chunk of it broke off. The bridge and part of the cliff’s edge crumbled and fell into the Memory Dump. We had to act fast.

  “Go!” Joy screamed. “Run! RUN!”

  Joy made it to the recall tube first. After she entered it, I stepped in beside her.

  “Whoa, whoa!” she snapped. “Sadness, stop! You are hurting Riley!”

  I didn’t know what she meant. Then she pulled out one of the core memories. It was bright blue because I’d leaned against it.

  I felt horrible. I hadn’t tried to change the core memories. They hadn’t even called to me the way they had the first time I’d changed one. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew I was disappointing Joy…and she said I was hurting Riley, too.

  I would never hurt Riley. Not on purpose.

  The cliffs underneath us were starting to crumble. If we were going to get recalled, we had to move now. I wasn’t sure how I’d squeeze in next to Joy without touching the core memories, but there had to be some way.

  Then I realized the tube was already coming down and closing over Joy. She held her bag of core memories tightly and rode up the tube alone. All I could do was watch her go.

  “Joy?” I called hopelessly.

  Bing Bong called after her, too, but she was already on her way.

  She’d left us. But at least she’d get to back to Headquarters and help Riley. That was the most important thing.

  The ground shook harder underneath us. More of the cliff was falling away. I scrambled back so I wouldn’t fall. I didn’t realize the shaking was affecting Joy’s recall tube…but Bing Bong did. As a huge chunk of the ground fell away and crumbled down to the dump, I hid my face in my arms. When I looked up, I was at the very edge of a brand-new, very steep cliff. My ears were ringing, but I still heard something that sounded like screams.

  I peered over the cliff’s edge. When I looked down, I saw Joy and Bing Bong, far, far away, and still plummeting down to the abyss.

  “Joy!” I screamed, but she was too far to hear me. I sat back and buried my face in my hands. Even though I knew she couldn’t hear me, I spoke to her. “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I tried for a while to shout down to Joy and Bing Bong, but I never heard anything back. I knew from the manuals that the dump was very deep below the surface of Long Term Memory. Worse, I knew what happened to anything that landed in the dump. It faded away, forgotten forever. Thanks to me, that’s what would happen to Joy and Bing Bong…and Riley’s core memories.

  Joy was right. I was hurting Riley. I’d hurt Riley. If I hadn’t started touching memories…if I’d just listened to Joy and stayed in my Circle of Sadness, none of this would have happened.

  I wished I was the one who was about to disappear. Part of me wanted to throw myself into the dump, but I couldn’t do it. Still, I knew a place where I could disappear. A place so big and vast and winding that no one would ever find me.

  I trudged slowly to the maze of Long Term Memory shelves. I walked inside…and kept walking. I think I dragged my hand along a shelf. I might have touched memories. I might have turned them blue. I don’t really know. I didn’t feel anything. I just walked. If I could have, I’d have walked forever.

  Once I heard that when people are depressed, they can hear things in their heads. That must have been what happened to me, because at one point, I heard Joy’s voice behind me.

  “Sadness!” she cried.

  I sighed. It was just my imagination. Joy was gone.

  But when I heard the voice again, I turned around. She was there. Joy was there!

  “Joy?” I asked.

  For the littlest second, I was excited…but then I knew that if Joy had made it back from the dump, she needed to get back to Headquarters without me. I would only ruin everything, just like I had from the beginning. I ran as fast as I could
away from her.

  “Wait, Sadness!” Joy yelled.

  She chased me. It was nice she wanted me around, but I knew I shouldn’t turn back.

  “You were right, Joy,” I called to her. “Riley’s better off without me!”

  I ran and ran, turning corners whenever I could so I would lose Joy, but I still heard her pounding after me. I left the Long Term Memory shelves and ran into Imagination Land. I ducked into the French Fry Forest and toppled fries into her path so she couldn’t follow me, but she got past them. In Cloud Town I grabbed a chunk of cloud and tried to float away.

  “Sadness!” Joy called after me.

  I couldn’t let her catch me. I was high above her and moving fast. I’d get away, then Joy and Riley and everyone else would be safe.

  I’d flown pretty far, and I was getting used to the idea of flying around aimlessly for the rest of my life, when something whapped into me.

  “Joy?” I asked, surprised.

  She’d been the thing that whapped into me. I don’t know how she got into the air, but she did, and she’d grabbed me, and now we were zooming across the sky, and…

  SPLAT!

  We smashed into the side of Headquarters and slid down the window. We almost fell, but we both managed to grab hold of the window ledge. We held on tight.

  I wanted to ask Joy how she got to me. I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t have done it, that everyone was better off with me not around…but it took all my energy just to hold on.

  Joy managed to pull herself higher. She banged on the window. I saw Fear, Anger, and Disgust appear on the other side. They shouted some things, but I couldn’t hear what they said. Then I saw flame, and a circle of glass was sliced out of the window. Fear, Disgust, and Anger leaned out through the hole and helped Joy and me inside.

  I almost cried. It felt so good to be back in Headquarters, but at the same time, I knew it was the last place I should be. On the big screen, I saw Riley sitting on a bus. She was all by herself, and the bus was moving. She was running away, just like we’d heard. I hoped Joy could take care of it.

  Instead, she turned to me. “Sadness,” she said, “it’s up to you.”

  I was sure I heard her wrong, but she kept looking at me. “Me?” I asked. “I can’t, Joy.”

  “Riley needs you,” she said.

  Riley…needed me?

  I could tell from the look on Joy’s face that she believed it.

  Riley had lost so much. Her home, her friends, her hockey team…everything that was familiar to her.

  Riley should be sad about all that. She needed to be.

  I took the console and steered.

  There was an idea bulb that was sparking and steaming, but it flicked off when I put my hands on the controls. I removed it and placed it aside.

  Riley’s face started to look sad. She thought for a little bit, then she jumped up.

  “Wait!” Riley told the driver. “Stop!”

  The driver did. Riley ran to the front.

  “I wanna get off,” she said.

  I kept steering as she ran away from the bus, all the way home. Her new home. When she walked in, Mom and Dad rushed over to her.

  “Riley!” Mom cried.

  “Riley, there you are!” Dad echoed. “Thank goodness!”

  “We were worried sick!” Mom said. “Where have you been? It’s so late…”

  They looked so upset. Riley had worried them so much…I knew they really loved her to get that worried about her.

  “Honey, what happened?” Dad asked Riley. “Are you all right?”

  “We asked the neighbors, we called the school, I talked to your teacher…” Mom added.

  I needed a way for Riley to show her parents how she really felt, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Then Joy handed me all the core memories. She wanted me to touch them. I met her eyes—was she sure? Joy nodded.

  I touched them all until they become completely blue. I placed one in the recall unit so Riley could remember it. It was a memory of her and her best friend, Meg, laughing together when they were really little.

  Riley cried as she remembered it. One by one, I put the blue core memories into the recall unit so Riley could think about them. Each one made her cry more, but that was okay. It was good.

  Finally, she was ready to speak to her parents.

  “I know you don’t want me to,” she sobbed, “but I miss home. I miss Minnesota. You need me to be happy, but…I want my old friends back, and my hockey team. I wanna go home. Please don’t be mad.”

  “We’re not mad,” Dad said. “You know what? I miss Minnesota, too. I miss the woods where we took hikes.”

  “And the backyard where you used to play,” Mom added.

  “Spring Lake, where you learned to skate,” Dad said.

  Their memories made Riley cry even more, but it felt good, like a relief. Soon they were all hugging and crying and sharing the memories they’d always love…but always miss, too.

  Joy reached into her satchel and handed me something I didn’t know she had: my blue core memory. The one Riley had made when she spoke in front of the class.

  I took Joy’s hand and put it on the console. Now we were running things together. On the screen, we saw Riley smile through her tears. Then something wonderful happened. A new core memory was formed! It was a combination of joy and sadness, both yellow and blue. It rolled into the core memory holder and created a brand-new Family Island.

  So on that day, Joy and I became a team.

  A lot changed after that. It’s been a bunch of months, and Riley’s happy in San Francisco now. She’s sad sometimes, too, and sometimes she’s angry, scared, or disgusted. But most of the time she’s a mix of all of us. That’s why we have an improved console—a big one that we can all drive at once. The view out Headquarters’ windows is pretty nice, too. Riley has brand-new Islands of Personality, including Tragic Vampire Romance Island, which I just can’t get enough of!

  Things are good. And when they’re not good that’s good, too.

  And I don’t feel left out anymore. We’re all in this together, and we’re all looking out for Riley. She’s twelve now, and Joy thinks everything will be smooth from here on out.

  I don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.