Driven by Emotions (6 page)

“Come on, Joy, one more time,” Bing Bong said. “I’ve got a feeling about this one.”

So we tried again. We did things a little differently this time. Bing Bong found the steepest memory hill, and we dragged the rocket all the way to its tip-top. We both climbed into the rocket
and sang Bing Bong’s song, and when the rocket roared to life, we sang even
louder
. We whipped down the first hill and zoomed up the second one. Suddenly, it felt like we shot forward
with an extra boost of energy. The rocket flew off the top of that second hill, soared into the air…

…and made the jump! The rocket flew all the way out of the dump and landed on the cliff’s edge. Bing Bong and I were saved!

“Woo-hoo!” I cheered. “Bing Bong, we did it! We—”

But then I turned around and realized Bing Bong was gone.

“Bing Bong?” I called. “Bing Bong!”

I heard laughter. I looked down into the dump. He was there. Bing Bong. He was dancing and smiling and happier than I’d ever seen him.

“Ya-ha-ha!” he cheered. “You made it! Go! Go save Riley! Take her to the moon for me, okay?”

He waved good-bye…then disappeared. Riley’s imaginary friend was gone forever.

“I’ll try, Bing Bong. I promise,” I said.

Suddenly, I understood. That’s why the rocket had been so fast on the second hill. Bing Bong had jumped off. He’d sacrificed himself for me. For Riley.

It was the most loving thing I’d ever seen anyone do.

I wanted to take a moment to sit there and think about him, but the world around me started to rumble, and I knew I didn’t have time. I had to get back to Headquarters, and first I needed
to find Sadness. But where? I darted back into the Long Term Memory shelves and noticed all the memories on the bottom shelves were blue—as though someone very sad had been running her hands
over them as she walked.

“Sadness!” I called, and took off running, following the blue path. Soon I found her, far up ahead, and I knew she’d run to me when I called her, and we could get to
Headquarters right away. “Sadness! Sadness!”

Sadness turned and saw me, but instead of running toward me, she ran away.

“Sadness!” I cried.

“Just let me go,” she said. “Riley’s better off without me.”

“Come back!” I wailed, but Sadness was still running, and she had a huge head start. I chased her all the way through Long Term Memory and into Imagination Land. She lost me in the
French Fry Forest, then I found her again in Cloud City but she grabbed a cloud and soared too far overhead for me to catch her. Soon she was floating above the remnants of Family Island, which at
this point was little more than some debris and the trampoline that used to support the whole structure.

The trampoline…

I suddenly had the craziest idea ever in the history of crazy ideas. I ran to the Imaginary Boyfriend Generator I’d seen earlier when Bing Bong had taken Sadness and me on the Imagination
Land tour. The boyfriend was still moping next to it, peeling petals off a flower.

“You!” I said. “Did you mean what you said before?”

“I would die for Riley!” he moaned. “I would die for Riley. I would die—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I shushed him. “Time to prove it.”

I scooped the imaginary boyfriend into my bottomless satchel, then started up the generator to turn more and more of them out. As they came down the conveyer belt, I caught each one in my
satchel. Then I ran along the cliff’s edge toward Friendship Island. Once I had Sadness in sight, I aligned myself with her and poured out all the imaginary boyfriends from the satchel. They
quickly stacked up below me—standing on each other’s shoulders—until they formed a very wobbly tower. And I was at the very top!

“Whoa!” I yelled. The tower was so unsteady I nearly fell!

“This is crazy, this is crazy…” I muttered to myself. “No, no, no! Joy! Be positive!”

I made the mistake of looking down again.

“I am positive that this is crazy!” I said.

I looked out at the trampoline on Family Island, then at Sadness floating just past it, and then at Headquarters high above her. If I just timed everything right…

“NOW!” I yelled.

All the imaginary boyfriends leaned forward, launching me onto the Family Island trampoline. I bounced off it, then zoomed into the air at the perfect trajectory to catch Sadness.

“Joy?” she said, surprised.

“Hang on!” I cried, because we weren’t done yet. We were still soaring up, up, up…until we
smacked
into the window of Headquarters.

We quickly slid
down
the window and, at the last second, grabbed the window ledge. I then managed to reach up and bang on the window until I saw Fear, Anger, and Disgust rush over. They
were all wide-eyed with shock.

That was when I realized a little error in my plan. The windows of Headquarters don’t open! How were they going to let us in?

I honestly have no idea how it happened but, suddenly, a giant circular hole appeared in the window, big enough for Sadness and me to climb through.

“Thank goodness you’re back!” Fear cried.

I looked past him and saw what was happening with Riley on the view screen.

She was on a bus, all by herself. Running away. And I knew I couldn’t stop her on my own.

“Sadness,” I said, “it’s up to you.”

“Me?” she asked. “I can’t, Joy.”

But I knew she could. I led her to the console. It was her turn to drive. She held her hand over the controls and removed the idea bulb. Riley’s face changed. It went from pinched and
angry to open and sad. Her eyes welled. And after a minute, she jumped up and told the bus driver to stop the bus because she wanted to get off. The bus driver listened, and Riley ran all the way
home. Mom and Dad had been so worried they didn’t know whether to hug Riley or scream at her when she got there, but I knew what to do. I handed Sadness all of Riley’s core memories,
the ones I’d been protecting all this time. When Sadness touched them, they turned completely blue. And as she placed each memory in the projector, Riley remembered each one of them. She
recalled baking cookies with Mom and Dad when she was little. She remembered running around the living room with her underpants on her head, and Dad chasing after her with a towel. She remembered
the time when she scored her first hockey goal, and when she used to skate on the frozen lake with Mom and Dad.

Riley remembered all of these moments and began to cry.

“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.”

They weren’t. Mom and Dad saw how sad she was and they just comforted her. They said they missed home, too. And even though all three of them were really sad, they were sad together. And
that was kind of…joyful.

As Riley, Mom, and Dad all hugged, I gave Sadness her blue core memory which I had retrieved from the Memory Dump. Sadness smiled at me and took my hand. She led me over to the console and
placed my hand next to hers, so we could drive together.

PING!

I knew that wonderful sound. A new core memory was being created! And it was like no other memory we had seen before. Instead of being a single color, this core memory was blue and gold, all
swirled together. The other Emotions and I stared in awe as the new core memory sphere rolled into Headquarters and settled in the core memory holder. Then a lightline emerged from the back of
Headquarters into the Mind World, generating a brand-new Family Island! It was far bigger and even more beautiful than the original one.

I rested my head on Sadness, and we both smiled. Riley was going to be just fine now. And so were we.

So, you know, that was a little while ago, and since then things have changed a lot in ol’ Headquarters. The core memories? They’re not all golden yellow anymore. Each one is made of
swirls of all of our colors. And that’s had a huge impact on the new Islands of Personality. They’ve all grown back now, and they’re better than ever! Friendship Island has
expanded, and recently opened a Friendly Argument section, which Anger loves. Sadness has a particular fondness for Tragic Vampire Romance Island. Boy Band Island…we’re kind of hoping
that one’s just a phase, but honestly, I’m thrilled with all of it. And we even have a new, expanded console with so many kinds of buttons and levers and gadgets. The best thing about
it is that it has space for all five of us to drive together at the same time. Turns out we make an amazing team.

Everything is pretty fantastic. And I feel like we really have it all together now, just like Riley. Our girl is amazing. She has great new friends, a great new house…things
couldn’t be better. After all, Riley’s twelve now. What could happen?

Ugh, okay, I
guess I’m supposed to tell you about the big move to San Francisco and how Joy, Sadness,
Anger, Fear, and I ended up working together at one big console (a console that gives us nowhere near enough personal space, if you ask me). Fine. Whatever. Here goes.

So the whole thing started when Riley was a baby. That’s when I showed up, and seriously, I’m not sure how the girl got along without me. From what I hear, they were feeding Riley
mysterious mushy green stuff before I hit the scene, and that is
not
acceptable. I got there around the time of solid food, and believe me, if it wasn’t brightly colored or shaped like
a dinosaur, there was no way I was letting Riley eat it. Broccoli for example? Immediate spit-out.

So life was what it was and it all worked out fine for Riley, because I was so ready to step in and save her from anything disgusting, including out-of-fashion clothes and bad music. Not on my
watch.

Then came the news that we were moving from Minnesota to San Francisco.

Are you kidding me?

First of all, we took the trip in a station wagon.
No one
looks cool in a station wagon. Why couldn’t Mom and Dad have rented an awesome convertible for the trip? And to make
matters worse, we were
in
that station wagon for just this side of forever. Do you have any idea how many smells three people generate when they’re in a small space for that long?
Gross! Then we finally got to San Francisco…um…have you ever seen that place? All those murals on the walls, like anyone wants to see bad public art. I swear, some of the buildings
looked like they were made of garbage, and the hills…I can’t with the hills. I just can’t.

So we got to the city, and then we found Riley’s new house, which was basically an abomination of dirt and grime stuck together with termite saliva. That was the outside. It smelled like
something died on the inside. You know why? Because something did. We saw a
dead mouse
. Not acceptable. The only thing that would have made it even remotely okay was a full sanitizing
followed by a major decorating plan that involved every one of Riley’s cutest possessions, but you know what? The moving van with all those possessions had gone missing. Horrifying, and
horrifying again. We were left with no barrier between us and the cramped prison cell that was now Riley’s room.

Joy thought we’d feel better if we had a great lunch, and she suggested a pizza place we saw on the way into town. I’m all for pizza. It’s totally on my acceptable list,
especially if it has cheese that’s gooey enough to stretch, but not so gooey it breaks off and dangles down Riley’s chin until it looks like she’s spitting it up. But this San
Francisco pizza place? It put
broccoli
on the pizza! That’s not food, it’s torture! And it was the only option they had! I wasn’t sure what to do first: grab my barf bag or
call the health inspector and let him know the place was shoving out poison.

The clear verdict? Moving to San Francisco was a horrible disaster and the worst decision Mom and Dad had ever made. Fear, Anger, and I were beyond upset, but then Joy showed us some hysterical
memories, and that was pretty fun. If I could have just watched those, I would have forgotten all about the Broccoli Pizza Monster, and everything would’ve been fine.

But then something weird happened. We were all looking at a funny memory when, suddenly, it turned blue and sad. Doesn’t make sense, right? So we turned around and saw Sadness touching the
memory. I was completely disgusted. I mean, the memory was of Dad forgetting to put the emergency brakes on the station wagon and letting it roll into a dinosaur tail. That’s brilliant stuff!
But Sadness had wrecked it!