Driven by Emotions (15 page)

I remembered from the mind manuals that there was another station. “Uh-huh, through there,” I replied.

So we followed Bing Bong into Imagination Land. He was really excited to give us a tour. Joy loved it, but it was a little too strenuous and interactive for me. We had to tromp through French
Fry Forest, and Trophy Town, and Cloud Town…it really would have been nicer to lie down for a while. Then Bing Bong led us to Preschool World, but on the way there, we heard a loud
sound.

It was Hockey Island, crumbling like an iceberg.

“Bing Bong,” Joy said, “we have to go back to the station now.”

“Sure thing,” Bing Bong said. “This way, just past Graham Cracker Castle.”

I was pretty sure he was still leading us to Preschool World, not the train station—but then he stopped, like he was confused, too.

“Hey, that’s weird,” he said. “Graham Cracker Castle used to be right here. I wonder why they moved it?”

He looked around, and seemed to get even more confused. “Wow, that’s not…I would have sworn Sparkle Pony Mountain was right here. Hey, what’s going on?”

I noticed a bulldozer in front of us. It knocked over a big pink castle.

“Princess Dream World!” Bing Bong gasped.

Glitter dust plumed everywhere. The bulldozer kept moving. “Oh, no!” Bing Bong gasped again. “The Stuffed Animal Hall of Fame!”

The dozer ripped the head off a big stuffed bear.
Sad.
Then Bing Bong saw something that really got him upset.

“My rocket!” he screamed.

It was a wagon, really, and two Forgetters were carrying it toward the pile in front of the bulldozer, which was pushing it all toward the edge of a cliff. Bing Bong ran as fast as he could and
tried to catch up with them, but he didn’t make it. The Forgetters threw the rocket on the pile, and the bulldozer shoved it and the rest of the rubble off a cliff and into the dump.

“Nooo!” he protested. “No! No! No! You can’t take my rocket to the dump! Riley and I are going to the
moon
!”

But the rocket was gone. Bing Bong was so stunned and distraught he dropped to his knees. “Riley can’t be done with me.”

Joy walked over to him and tried to make him feel better. “Hey, it’s going to be okay!” she said. “We can fix this! We just need to get back to Headquarters. Which way to
the train station?”

She tried to lead him back, but Bing Bong wouldn’t move. “I had a whole trip planned for us,” he said.

Joy tried again. “Hey, who’s ticklish, huh? Here comes the tickle monster…”

She tickled him, but he didn’t respond.

“Hey, Bing Bong!” Joy tried. “Look at this!”

She made a silly face. He didn’t even glance at her. I could tell Joy was getting impatient.

“Here’s a fun game!” she said. “You point to the train station and we all go there! Won’t that be fun? Come on, let’s go to the train station!”

I understood Joy wanted to get back to Headquarters. I did, too. But Bing Bong didn’t need someone to cheer him up or get him motivated. He was sad because something really depressing had
happened to him.

He
needed
to be sad.

I sat down next to him. “I’m sorry they took your rocket,” I said. “They took something that you loved. It’s gone…forever.”

“Sadness, don’t make him feel worse,” Joy said.

“Sorry,” I said…but I wasn’t. Not really. I didn’t want to upset Joy, but I thought, well, maybe she just didn’t understand.

Bing Bong still stared into the pit where his rocket had disappeared. “It’s all I had left of Riley,” he said.

“I bet you and Riley had great adventures,” I told him.

“They were wonderful,” Bing Bong agreed. “Once we flew back in time. We had breakfast twice that day.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said. “I bet Riley liked it.”

“Oh, she did,” Bing Bong said. “We were best friends.”

He started to cry then. He cried candy, just the way Riley imagined he would when she was little. I let him put his head on my shoulder.

“Yeah, it’s sad,” I said.

I put my arm around him and let him cry. Eventually, the sobs got softer…then slower…and then they turned to sniffles. He lifted his head and blinked, wiping at his eyes.

“I’m okay now,” he said. “C’mon, the train station is this way.”

He started walking. I felt tired, like I’d been crying, too, but I also felt good, because I’d made it better for Bing Bong. I got up so I could follow him, but Joy was in front of
me, and she had this weird look on her face.

“Wow,” she said. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He was sad. So I listened—”

Suddenly, we heard the train whistle.

“Hey!” Bing Bong shouted. “There’s the train!”

I hurried to catch up with him, and soon he, Joy, and I were riding the Train of Thought. It was a nice ride, but when it became nighttime and things got dark, the train stopped.

“Hey, hey!” Joy called to the engineer. “Why aren’t we moving?”

“Riley’s gone to sleep,” the engineer said. “We’re all on break.”

“You mean we’re stuck here until morning?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Bing Bong noted. “The Train of Thought doesn’t run while she’s asleep.”

“Oh, we can’t wait that long!” Joy cried.

“How about we wake her up?” I suggested.

“Sadness, that’s ridiculous,” Joy scolded me. “How could we possibly…” Then she spotted the gates to Dream Productions. Her face lit up like she had an
amazing idea. “How about we wake her up!”

“Great idea, Joy,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “Come on!”

We walked to Dream Productions, where they produce Riley’s dreams. Once we were through the gate, we were surrounded by lots of actors in costumes, set workers and lighting guys, and lots
of people on golf carts. Everyone seemed very busy.

“Whoa!” Joy marveled. “This place is huge.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it looks so much smaller than I expected.”

Joy got really excited when she saw a unicorn sitting in a director’s chair, so I went up to it and said, “My friend says you’re famous. She wants your autograph.”

Joy didn’t like that. “No, no, Sadness, don’t bother Miss Unicorn, okay?”

It was like she was embarrassed or something. Oh, well.

Joy, Bing Bong, and I got to a big building:
STAGE B
. It seemed like a good place to find the Dream Productions team, so we went inside. There was a lot going on—lots of actors and sets
and props and things. We weren’t supposed to be inside, so we hid behind some production equipment and shuffled over to a rack of costumes.

“Okay, how are we gonna wake her up?” Joy asked.

“Well,” I said, “she wakes up sometimes when she has a scary dream. We could scare her.”

“Scare her?” Joy echoed. “No, no, she’s been through enough already. Sadness, you may know your way around down here, but I know Riley! We’re gonna make her so
happy she’ll wake up with exhilaration! We’ll excite her awake!”

“That’s never happened before,” I noted.

“Ooh!” Joy squealed as she found a costume she liked. “Riley loves dogs. Put this on!”

It was the back half of a dog costume. Joy took the front half.

“I don’t think that’ll work,” I warned her, but I put on the costume anyway. Then Joy and I stood to the side of the set while everyone started shooting the dream. It was
a dream about Riley’s first day at school, except even sadder than the way it actually happened. She was talking to her whole class…but then her teeth fell out and it turned out she
wasn’t wearing pants.

“Ready?” Joy asked me.

“I don’t think this happy thing is going to work,” I said. “But if we scare her—”

“Here we go!” yelled Joy.

She pulled me out with her, which was pretty easy since she was the front half of the dog, and we tried to leap around like a puppy. I guess it went okay. I couldn’t see anything from my
part of the costume. All I knew was Joy was barking and running around for a long time, and still no one shouted that Riley was waking up, so I knew it wasn’t working. I said so to Joy, but
before she could answer me, the costume split in half. I thought that might be good and scary, so I ran away from Joy, all around the classroom set.

“Huh?” Joy whispered. “Sadness, what are you doing? Come back here!”

I saw Bing Bong jump in front of the camera, so I let Joy get closer to me.

“Sadness!” she said accusingly. “You are ruining this dream! You’re scaring her!”

“But look,” I said, “it’s working!”

I pointed to the Sleep Indicator on the wall. It was moving from
ASLEEP
to
AWAKE
. It wasn’t there yet, but it was a lot closer than when we started. Being half-dogs was a lot more
effective than being one full dog. I wanted to have Joy actually catch my tail in her mouth and shake it around while I whimpered, but we didn’t get the chance.

“THEY ARE NOT PART OF THIS DREAM!”
the director yelled.
“GET THEM!”

Security came to get us. Joy and I left the dream and ran away, but they got Bing Bong. We couldn’t help him, because if they saw us, they’d grab us, too. Joy was really upset
because Bing Bong had been holding the bag of core memories for her, and now they were gone, too.

I saw where they took him. It was the Subconscious. To get there and find him, Joy and I had to go down a massive, dark, spooky staircase. At the bottom was a giant gate, with only darkness and
eerie noises behind it. The gate was watched by two guards.

“What is this place?” Joy whispered.

“The Subconscious,” I told her. “I read about it in the manual. It’s where they take all the troublemakers.”

Joy looked at the guards. “Hmmm. How do we get in?”

I had an idea. I motioned for Joy to follow me. The two guards were deep in conversation, so Joy and I just tiptoed past them. We walked right up to the closed gate…then I shook it.

“Hey! You!” one guard shouted.

“Oh! You caught us!” I said. I tried to sound really guilty.

“Get back in there!” the other guard demanded. “No escaping!”

The guards shoved Joy and me through the gate and then slammed it shut.

I’d gotten us inside, but the place was really a massive, dark, damp cave with noises that echoed in spooky ways. “I don’t like it here,” I told Joy. “It’s
where they keep Riley’s darkest fears.”

“It’s broccoli!” Joy gasped as she saw a giant stalk of the evil vegetable. Then a door in the rock wall creaked open, revealing a rickety set of stairs. Joy and I both
screamed.

“The stairs to the basement!” I yelled.

And we’d only just gotten away from them when we heard a giant roar and a massive vacuum cleaner popped out of the shadows and came after us.

“Grandma’s vacuum cleaner!” Joy screamed.

We ran until it was out of sight, then hid behind a rock. Once we’d caught our breath, we tried tiptoeing through the cave again. We tried to be very quiet, but every step I took crunched
down on something.

“Would you walk quieter?” Joy asked.

“I’m trying!” I told her.

“What is going—” Joy asked, reaching down and picking something up. “Candy wrappers.”

Bing Bong cried candy, so it seemed like a good sign. We followed the trail of wrappers. Soon we heard sobbing.

“Bing Bong!” Joy cried.

He was there, crouched down in a big cage made of balloons. He seemed happy to see us for about a second; then he warned us to be very quiet. He pointed, and we realized we were right next to a
giant sleeping clown.

“It’s Jangles,” Joy said. She sounded terrified. Jangles scared me, too. Riley met Jangles at her cousin’s birthday party. He had a face white as a tomb and a grinning
mouth so red it looked like he snacked on children. I’m pretty sure his teeth were fangs, too. All of them.

This Jangles was even scarier than the real one. He was as big as a T. rex. And he murmured wickedly while he slept. “Who’s the birthday girl?” he slurred.

Joy spoke very softly. “Do you still have the core memories?”

“Yeah.” Bing Bong handed them through the balloon-cage slats and Joy slung the bag back over her shoulder. “All he cared about was the candy!”

Joy tried to pry apart the balloons so Bing Bong could get out, but they squeaked like fingernails running down a blackboard and made the hair on my neck stand up. I watched to see if Jangles
would wake up. He snorted and rolled over, but stayed asleep as Joy stretched the bars even farther and Bing Bong escaped.

“We’re out of here!” Bing Bong declared. “Let’s get to that train and wait for morning.”

We were running really fast, but then Joy stopped and grabbed my arm. “Wait, the train’s not running. We still have to wake up Riley.”

“But how?” I asked.

We both had the same idea at once. We looked up at Jangles.

“Oh, no,” said Bing Bong.

Joy and I gathered all our courage and woke up Jangles. We told him that there was going to be a birthday party. That was enough to get him really excited.

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.