Driven by Emotions (5 page)

Okay, so we were in there with Bing Bong and the core memories. We just had to find him, get the memories, get
out
of the Subconscious, then catch the Train of Thought back to
Headquarters. Easy peasy!

“I don’t like it here,” Sadness said. “It’s where they keep Riley’s darkest fears.”

It was true. I tried to be brave, but horror after horror leaped out of the darkness and lunged at us. Terrors like broccoli, the stairs to the basement, and Grandma’s vacuum cleaner. My
heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe, but I pulled it together and made sure Sadness did the same. We tiptoed forward so we wouldn’t attract the attention of anything scary, but
every step we took crunched.

“Would you walk quieter?” I hissed.

“I’m trying!” she whispered back.

Then I looked down to see what was so noisy, and I saw them.

Candy wrappers.

From an imaginary friend who cried candy? I suspected yes. We followed the wrapper trail and found Bing Bong. He was in a jail cell…made of balloons.

“There you are!” I cried.

“Shhhh!” Bing Bong warned me. He pointed downward. His jail cell was on the belly of a giant sleeping clown!

I recognized the clown and shuddered. He was the entertainment at Riley’s cousin’s birthday party a long time ago. His face was deathly white; horrible blue stars marked his beady,
evil eyes; and his mouth spread in an inhumanly large red grin. He must have been ten times the size he was in real life, and just as terrifying.

“Jangles,” I whispered, my voice quivering.

“Who’s the birthday girl? Who’s the birthday girl?” the clown repeatedly murmured in his sleep. His bright blue curls fluttered every time he exhaled.

“Do you have the core memories?” I asked Bing Bong.

He handed them to me and I hugged them close. Thank goodness they were safe!

“All he cared about was the candy,” Bing Bong said softly. “Then he twisted this balloon cage and locked me inside.”

I had to help Bing Bong escape. I pulled apart the bars of the balloon cage, but they
SQUEEEAKED
so horribly I was sure Jangles would wake up. We froze as the giant clown snuffled and
snorted…but soon he was breathing deeply again, and we eased Bing Bong out. We were free to go, but just as we started to run away, I realized something.
Wait. The train’s not
running.
I stopped and turned to Sadness. “We still have to wake up Riley,” I said.

“But how?” asked Sadness.

We looked back at the clown and knew what we had to do.

“Oh, no,” muttered Bing Bong.

We walked right up to Jangles and honked his nose. The clown’s eyes popped open. He stood up, towering over me until I felt tiny like an ant.

“H-hey, Sadness, di-did you hear about the p-pahh-party that we’re having?” I said.

“Ohhhh, yeah. Yes, Joy! Isn’t it a ba-bahh-birthday party?” said Sadness.

“Did you say…birthday?” Jangles leered.

“Yes!” I assured him. “And there’s going to be cake and presents and—”

“And games and balloons—” added Sadness.

“A
BIRTHDAY
?” Jangles roared. He pulled out a mallet large enough to flatten me with one stroke.

“Okay!” I encouraged him. “Follow us!”

I ran as fast as I could, Sadness and Bing Bong right behind me. We raced all the way to the gates of the Subconscious. Jangles bashed down the gates with his mallet, terrifying the guards, who
ran away and didn’t try to stop us. We ran all the way back to the Dream Productions set, where I pointed Jangles toward the outside wall.

Jangles demolished the wall with his mallet, then leaned into the camera with his wickedly toothy smile.
“WHO’S THE BIRTHDAY GIRL?”
he roared.

I saw the dial flip immediately to
AWAKE
. Riley was up!

“Woo-hoo!” I yelled.

Sadness and I did a little happy dance. Mission accomplished!

“Come on, let’s go!” said Bing Bong.

We sprinted to the Train of Thought, leaving quite a ruckus behind us. Jangles was laughing maniacally while smashing up the sets. Worst nightmare ever!

When we got to the train, it was already moving at full speed. We ran as fast as we could and leaped aboard the last car.

“Ha, ha! We made it! Guess who’s on their way to Headquarters?” I exclaimed, grabbing Sadness and swinging her around in celebration.

“We are!” said Sadness.

Once we were all settled on the train, tucked in among the memories heading up to Headquarters, I turned to Sadness. “That was a good idea,” I admitted, “about scaring Riley
awake. You’re not so bad.”

“Really?” Sadness said.

“Nice work,” I said.

Bing Bong had picked up one of the memory spheres that was being transported in the train. It was the twisty-tree memory—one of my favorites! Riley had just finished playing hockey and was
standing beside that big twisty tree near the lake, when her whole hockey team showed up and started cheering for her. Mom and Dad were there cheering, too…Riley was so happy and laughing. I
loved it.

“Whoa, is this Riley?” Bing Bong asked.

I nodded. I forgot he hadn’t played with Riley since she was three.

“She’s so big now, she won’t fit in my rocket,” Bing Bong said. “How are we going to get to the moon?”

Sadness had been looking at the memory, too. “I remember that day,” she said. “I love that one.”

I couldn’t believe it. Sadness actually liked a happy memory? “Atta girl!” I cried excitedly. “Now you’re getting it!”

“Yeah,” Sadness 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.”

Sadness noticed my face fall. “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

“I’ll tell you what. We’ll keep working on it together. Okay?”

Sadness agreed with a weak smile.

I slipped the twisty-tree memory into the satchel with the core memories. I thought it would be great to have it around Headquarters. I daydreamed about how wonderful it would be to return to
Headquarters and put everything back to normal, but then I heard a horrible
CREAK
. The entire train shuddered. I spun around and saw Honesty Island crumble and sink into nothingness!

“NO!” I screamed, but my voice was swallowed by more creaking and squealing as the crumbling island shook everything around us so violently that the entire Train of Thought plummeted
off its track!

Bing Bong, Sadness, and I screamed as the train fell. We crashed and fell among the cliffs of Riley’s mind…landing right back where we’d started.

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

Then one of the workers who had come to clean up after the crash said, “Haven’t you heard? Riley is running away.”

I couldn’t even speak. Riley wasn’t a girl who ran away. Riley was
happy
! Why was everything falling apart?

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

Yes, she was right. We had to move. We had to get to another island, then get to Headquarters from there. But what islands were left? I looked around desperately until I saw it.

“Family Island,” I said. “Let’s go!”

We ran as fast as we could toward Family Island, but it was already starting to shake and crumble.

“No!” I moaned. “That’s our only way back!”

Then I saw one of the shelves in Long Term break, exposing a recall tube! That would take us directly back to Headquarters. We all ran toward it. Family Island was falling apart around us, so we
had no time. I entered the recall tube, holding my satchel of core memories tight. Sadness crammed herself into the tube right beside me, but it was too tight a squeeze. She pushed up against the
core memories, and when I peeked into the bag, I saw them start to turn blue!

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

I pulled out one of the core memories to show Sadness how it was changing, and she stepped back, stunned.

“If you get in here, these core memories will get sad,” I said.

I looked at Sadness, then at the memories, and then at Family Island, which was nearly gone. For a moment I was frozen—I didn’t know what to do! Then I thought about Riley, and I
knew there was only one choice.

“I’m sorry. Riley needs to be happy,” I told Sadness. I placed the memory sphere back in the satchel, sealed it tight, and then pulled the recall tube closed. I began to ride
up the tube…alone.

Unfortunately, the tube wasn’t strong enough to handle the earthquake of Family Island falling to shreds. It broke apart and I fell out just as the ground below the tubes gave way and
collapsed. Sadness panicked and leaped back from the new crevasse. Bing Bong leaped forward and reached out to me. But he ended up falling, too.

I don’t know how long I dropped. It seemed like forever. Then I landed with a thud. When I opened my eyes, I saw only dim light from up above, and more memory spheres than I’d ever
seen in one place. They seemed not as bright as most memory spheres, but maybe I was just getting used to the darkness. Panic coursed through me as I realized I’d dropped the satchel of core
memories, but then I saw them a few feet away and quickly slung the bag over my shoulder.

I looked up. What I saw almost knocked all hope out of me. I was so deep in the Memory Dump, I could barely see the light from above.

“No, no, no, no!” I cried. I tried to race up a hill of memories, but it was too short to reach the top and too steep to climb. I only slid back down. I couldn’t stop trying,
though. Again and again I clawed my way up, but I never got any higher, never any closer to that light up above.

“Joy?” a voice called. “Joy.”

It was Bing Bong. I’d forgotten he had fallen down there with me.

“Joy, don’t you get it? We’re stuck down here. We’re forgotten,” said Bing Bong.

Forgotten?

No, that couldn’t be right.

I looked down at the memories at my feet. They
had
seemed dimmer than usual, but…

Suddenly, one faded away to nothingness.

Gone.

Forgotten.

I had failed for the first time ever, and my insides were churning around like crazy. Then I saw the blue core memory lying on the ground. It was the memory of Riley crying in front of her
class. I picked it up and watched tears pour down Riley’s cheeks. I fell to my knees and began to cry. My heart was broken.

There were so many faded memories around me. Most of them were moments so tiny I hadn’t even thought of them in ages. I watched two-year-old Riley sticking her tongue out while she was
coloring.

“I just wanted Riley to be happy,” I told Bing Bong, “and now…”

I sobbed. I don’t think I’d ever cried before. Maybe a sniffle or two when Riley was hurt, but this was different. It was like my whole body was heaving up and pouring out through my
tears. Bing Bong sat there next to me and rubbed my back a little, but the tears just kept coming until I didn’t have any more. When I was done, I felt like a wrung-out washcloth.

I looked around. Faded memories kept disappearing. Every second, more bits of Riley’s past went away. It was too awful to watch. I pulled out my favorite memory from the satchel—the
one at the twisty tree. I started to watch it, but a last tear fell onto the sphere. When I wiped it away, the color of the memory changed from gold…to blue.

That was strange. That had never happened before. Had Sadness done something to this memory?

The image on the screen wasn’t familiar anymore. Riley wasn’t with the whole team; she was sitting in the branch of the twisty tree with Mom and Dad, and she looked…sad.

I must have rewound the memory when I wiped away the tear. I rewound it further now. Riley was all alone, sitting in the tree and crying…sobbing, just like I had been a second ago.

I remembered what Sadness had said about that memory: that Riley had missed the winning shot in the game and felt so awful she wanted to quit. Then Mom and Dad came to talk to her—because
of Sadness! They came to talk to Riley because of Sadness. My entire favorite happy memory…it wouldn’t have happened if Sadness hadn’t gotten Mom, Dad, and the team to comfort
Riley—the same way Sadness had comforted Bing Bong in Imagination Land.

Riley
needed
Sadness. The same way she needed me. In fact, maybe Riley’s Joy was even more joyful because she also had Sadness in her life.

It was crazy enough to make my head want to explode, but all of a sudden, I knew for a fact that it was true. I had to find Sadness and bring her back to Headquarters right away!

“Come on, Bing Bong!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “We have to get back up there!”

“Joy,” he said sadly, “we’re stuck down here. We might as well be on another planet.”

Another planet. Yes! Another planet! Bing Bong had wanted to take Riley to the moon in his rocket…a rocket that was already thrown into the dump and ran on song power! I started singing
as loud as I could. It took a while, but then we heard the rocket beeping back at us! We ran to the sound and dug down through fading memories until we found it. Then we dragged it to the perfect
spot, a place in the dump with two giant hills of memories: one we could ride down to gain speed, and one we could zoom up again. If we got the rocket moving quickly enough, we could soar off the
top of the second hill and shoot all the way back up to the Long Term Memory cliffs!

We pulled the rocket to the top of the first hill and climbed in. As we rolled down, Bing Bong and I both sang his song. The rocket gained power with each word. It roared to life, picking up
speed as it raced down one hill and up the other. It was moving so quickly at the top of the second hill that it soared into the air…

…and crashed to the ground long before it got anywhere near the cliff’s edge.

I couldn’t give up, though. Bing Bong and I dragged the rocket all the way back to the first hill. We sang even louder, even stronger, and the rocket felt more powerful under our bodies. I
just knew this time we’d make it out.

Except we didn’t. We crashed again. We needed something more—a way to get more power—but I didn’t know what to do.