Driven by Emotions (8 page)

Yeah. Like he knew. But, hey, we had to try. We started pumping hockey memories into the core memory holder. Fear ran to the window to check on Hockey Island. Even I could see it was lighting
up. Not much, but a little.

“Ha-ha!” Fear cheered. “We did it! It’s working—”

BOOM!
The core memory holder flat-out rejected one of the memory spheres; blew it out like a bullet and nailed Anger right in the stomach.

I laughed. Just for a second. You totally would have, too—little, red Anger getting whopped like that. But then he roared back to the console and he was—shocker—furious. He
took the controls and had Riley play without even thinking, just slapping the puck around and…I’m not even going to pretend I know anything about hockey, but whatever Riley was doing
wasn’t hockey. It was ugly, and soon she stormed off the rink and tore off her skates. Mom tried to calm her down and tell her everything was going to be okay, which just proved she knew
nothing
about what was going on in Riley’s head.

“Stop saying everything will be all right!” Riley roared, and then stomped out of the building.

You can guess what happened to Hockey Island, right? Rubble.

By that night, I couldn’t even deal anymore. “On a scale of one to ten,” I said, “I give this day an F.”

“Well, why don’t we quit standing around and do something?” Anger asked.

“Like what, genius?” I pressed him.

“Like quitting,” Fear said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

For real. He was. He had a recall tube coming down and he was going to zip away to who-knows-where like Joy and Sadness. But of course, this was Fear. He couldn’t even quit correctly. He
got sucked halfway into the tube, got stuck, and practically smeared his face off on the tube.

Can you believe I have to live with these two? Me neither.

“Emotions can’t quit, genius,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Anger said. “Wait a minute!” He started rummaging through Riley’s idea bulbs, then held one up like it was something special.

“What is it?” Fear asked.

“Oh, nothing…just the best idea ever,” Anger said.

“What?” I asked.

“All the good core memories were made in Minnesota,” Anger said. “Ergo, we go back to Minnesota and make more. Ta-da!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Fear. “You’re saying…we run away?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it the Happy Core Memory Development Program.”

It still sounded majorly gross to me. If I’m traveling, I want to travel in comfort. Running away would
not
equal comfort. It would equal cheap food and smelly buses.

Of course, our new home wasn’t much better. And Anger was right, we’d had it pretty good in Minnesota.

Fear suggested we sleep on it. I was cool with that. Beauty sleep always helped. This time, though, I didn’t sleep well at all. And when I woke up, Fear was quaking under the console.
“What is going on?” I asked.

“We were at school,” he blabbered, “and we were naked, and there was a dog, and his back half was chasing him…and then we saw Bing Bong.”

“You idiot!” Anger screamed. “It was a
dream
! This is ridiculous, and we can’t even get a good night’s sleep anymore. Time to take action.” He grabbed
the idea bulb he’d had earlier—the one about running away. “Stupid Mom and Dad,” he grumbled. “If they hadn’t moved us, none of this would’ve
happened.” He moved the idea to the console, where he could plug it in and make it an official live idea in Riley’s mind. “Who’s with me?” Anger asked.

I thought about it for a moment. Running away was a big deal. But honestly, things couldn’t get any worse.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Anger plugged the idea into the console, and Riley sat up in bed, inspired. She pulled out her laptop.

“So how’re we gonna get to Minnesota from here?” I asked.

“Well, why don’t we go to the elephant lot and rent an elephant?” Anger railed.

Seriously, the sarcasm I have to deal with. It’s like a joke.

“What do you think?” Anger continued. “We’re taking the bus!”

The smelly, crowded bus. Private jet would be more my speed, but I guess that wasn’t so much an option. Honestly, I didn’t even know if a bus was an option. “A ticket costs
money,” I noted. “How do we get money?”

“Mom’s purse,” Anger said.

“You wouldn’t!” I gasped.

“Oh, but I would,” Anger assured me. “Where was Mom’s purse when we saw it last?”

I’d never really thought of Riley as a thief—thieves are pretty disgusting—but Anger had a point. Mom and Dad got us into this mess, so it made sense they should pay to get us
out.

Anger had the controls, and he led Riley downstairs. Mom was on the phone, and the purse was on the table. It was seriously simple to pull open the purse, slip out a credit card, and run back
upstairs. I was pretty impressed. Oh, sure, Honesty Island crumbled to dust the minute we did it, but at this point, what was one less island?

The next morning, instead of loading books in her backpack, Riley packed some clothes. We were serious about running away now, and that had Family Island pretty shaky, but Mom and Dad were kind
of getting what they deserved on that score. I mean, really, weren’t they the ones who’d hurt Family Island by moving us away? Yeah, I thought so, too. Sure, Mom and Dad acted all nice
and said they’d see us after school. But that only proved how clueless they were! How could they be so cheery? Didn’t they know how much trouble they’d caused by changing
everything on us?

Riley didn’t go to school that day. After she packed her backpack (I made sure she had a good selection of outfits—after all, she was going to have to get by with very little for a
while), she walked out the front door without saying a single word to Mom and Dad. She then headed for the bus station. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until much later in the afternoon, so
we had some time to kill.

Fear was paranoid that we’d get lost once we got to Minnesota, so he steered Riley into the public library to borrow some maps. And while she was there, she decided to flip through books
about runaway kids. Again, one of Fear’s brilliant ideas. He wanted to know what was in store for us, and ended up giving himself an anxiety attack.

As freaky as those books were, they didn’t deter Riley from carrying out our plan. She put the books back on the shelf and left the library. Thank goodness. Public places are
gross—totally full of germs. I mean, who knows how many people could have picked their noses and wiped their boogers on those chairs and shelves. Blech!

So we resumed our walk to the bus station. It was a grueling, unforgiving, relentless walk. If I hadn’t been convinced before that we needed to get as far away from San Francisco as
possible, the walk did it. With all those hills, it was a plod. And then we went through this dirty park. I must have seen bird poop on every bench. And, I don’t know, call me crazy, but back
in Minnesota, when you walked by someone, they said hi. They just did, whether or not they knew you. Here? No one. Yeah, yeah, I know Riley had her head down like she didn’t want to talk to
anyone, but still—how about some manners, San Francisco?

Worst part? The last few blocks before the station smelled like feet and sewage. Nothing in Minnesota smelled like feet and sewage. We’d be
soooo
much happier back there.

Mom called as we approached the bus station, but we were
not
going to answer and deal with that nonsense. Riley kept her head down and her nose as closed as possible, and we finally made
it to the bus station…which, of course, smelled like pee. I totally didn’t get it—did people seriously think the corners of the building were an okay place to do their business?
What were they, dogs marking their territory?

Riley was in line for tickets when Mom called again. She’d called fifteen times already.

Fear, Anger, and I heard a horrible sound. It hurt my ears—it was all rumbly and screechy and…it was the sound of Family Island collapsing.

“We’re losing the last island!” I screamed.

“This is madness! She shouldn’t run away!” Anger yelled.

“Let’s get that idea out of her head,” I said.

We tried. We seriously tried hard-core. But the idea wouldn’t budge from the console. It wouldn’t unscrew. Worse, it got fire-hot so we couldn’t even touch it! “Now
what?” I asked.

Then things got weird.

All the controls started shutting down. This nasty black yuckiness spread over the console. None of us had ever seen anything like it.

“Get that idea out of there!” I screamed.

Anger tried to slam a chair down on the console, but it just bounced off. Fear tried prying the idea out with a crowbar, but the bar just popped out and smacked him in the face…which
would have been funny at any other time, but now I was way too freaked out to laugh at his expense.

“How do we stop it?” Fear wailed.

I had an idea. “Make her feel scared! She might change her mind!”

“Yes!” Fear cried. “Brilliant!”

“I know it’s brilliant,” I snapped. “Do it!”

Fear tried. He pushed every button.

“Guys,” he said, and there was something in his voice I’d never heard before. A fear deeper than anything he’d ever shared. “We can’t make Riley feel
anything.”

“What have we done?” Anger asked.

I wondered the same thing. We’d messed up big-time, and now Riley was hunched on a bus, running away from the people who loved her.

“That’s it,” Anger said. “It’s over. There’s nothing more to do.”

At that moment, I heard banging on the back window. I ran over to investigate.

“It’s Joy!” I shouted.

She and Sadness were hanging on to the outside of the window! Who knows how they got there, but they wanted in. Just one problem…none of the windows in Headquarters opened.

“Stand back!” Anger roared. He threw a chair at the window, but it still wouldn’t open. These guys and their throwing things—do they really think it’s an effective
way to get things done?

“Brilliant,” I chided him.

“Well, what would you do, if you’re so smart!?” he challenged me.

You
don’t
want to challenge me. Watching him smolder, the little flames flickering on the top of his red, square body, I knew
exactly
what to do.

“I’d tell you, but you’re too dumb to understand,” I said.

“WHAT?” he spat.

“Of course your tiny brain is confused. Guess I’ll have to dumb it down to your level. Sorry I don’t speak ‘moron’ as well as you, but let me try…”

I made the dumbest face I possibly could. “Duuuuuhhhhh.”

That put him over the edge. His head became a blowtorch of flames as he screamed, so I picked him up and used his head to cut a hole in the glass.

Bingo—Joy and Sadness were in. And, yes, I am brilliant. Thank you.

It was good timing, too, because we all saw what was going down on the view screen in Headquarters. The bus was driving away with Riley on it. I was sure Joy would start driving the console and
make everything all right. But Joy did no such thing.

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

And Sadness…
Sadness
, of all the Emotions, took the console. She drove, and Riley’s face got all misty and, well…sad. A second later, Riley jumped up and told the bus
driver to stop so she could get off. Riley went home and poured her heart out to her worried parents, and, I’ve got to say, Mom and Dad did okay. They didn’t do any crazy parent stuff
like yell for no reason. They let Riley talk and they cried and hugged, and I wasn’t even grossed out when their faces got puffy from the tears.

That was a bunch of months ago, and now things are different for all of us Emotions. Even Headquarters is different. The core memories are a mix of different colors now—yellow, blue, red,
purple, and even a little green for some healthy disgust. I thought the colors wouldn’t blend well, but it totally works. And Joy isn’t so much in charge anymore. We all drive together
on a brand-new, upgraded console. Yeah, sure, it’s great, but as I said earlier, driving together means very little personal space. And I need my personal space.

Big picture, though? Things are good. And Riley’s killing it at school. Her friends are massively cool—way cooler than the cool kids I thought she wanted to hang with at first. Plus
the house is super cute now with all of Riley’s stuff in it. I’ve made sure she has the right posters on the walls. We even found a pizza place that serves the real deal—nothing
green on it whatsoever.

And can you believe Riley’s twelve now? Twelve and fabulous! It’ll be smooth sailing from here. Sure, there are a few things on the new console that we don’t understand yet,
like a little warning light labeled P
UBERTY
. Joy doesn’t think it’s important, though. And, honestly, I’ve taken care of the hard stuff already. Riley is totally set for an
awesome life with great friends, awesome parents, a way-cool fashion sense, and impeccable taste in just about everything…thanks to
moi
!