Driven by Emotions (9 page)

Oh, man. It’s
my turn to tell you our story…the story about moving to San Francisco and how it all
got crazy, and Riley was nearly kidnapped and whisked away forever to end up living in a sewer and begging for change on the street…

Okay, I’m running away with myself. I do that sometimes. Sorry. I just get so nervous when I think about what could have happened and how bad it could have been…but again, getting
ahead of the story.

I’ll start from the start. Riley’s start. Well, I wasn’t there for the
very
start. I came a little later, when Riley was a toddler. You wouldn’t believe the
disasters she almost got into every day. I was working overtime, I promise you that. She’d just run with complete abandon—if I hadn’t been steering, she’d have slammed into
every table leg and tripped over every toy she had. But with me there, it was all good. I’d be steering at the console while I talked it out.

“Very nice,” I’d say. “Okay, looks like you got this. Very good. Whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa
…sharp turn…look out! Look out!”

There was always stuff just waiting around to jump out and skin Riley’s knee. But I was a pro at keeping Riley safe. She never got hurt with me around. Well, she did get some scrapes from
hockey. I warned everyone time and time again that hockey is a
contact sport
! People lose teeth playing that game! It was not a safe choice!

I was outvoted, though. And Riley did love hockey, so she was bruised and scraped but happy.

Then came the move to San Francisco, which is a major city where crime rates are far higher than those in our little Minnesota town, and where the percentage of dot-com people pretty much
guarantees that cybercrime will be a part of Riley’s life. Oh, and three more things:

Earthquakes—Earthquakes—
EARTH­QUAKES
!

Why would Riley’s parents want to live in a place where the very ground could break open and swallow them up?

I didn’t have a say, though, so we left.

And the result was far, far worse than I’d feared. Dad drove an average of ten miles above the speed limit the entire way to San Francisco, which exponentially increased our chances of
vehicular death. He and Mom wouldn’t let Riley open the window because they wanted to keep the air-conditioning in, even though recycled car air increases the likelihood of passing airborne
viruses from one passenger to another.

Then we got to our new house, even though “new” was a misnomer, as the house had obviously been lived in by people who clearly didn’t clean up after themselves, and who could
have left any number of germs and viruses on every surface. Disgust and I were equally thrilled about that. The floors were also very creaky, and I’m fairly sure the house didn’t have
the superstructure to withstand…oh, an
earthquake
!

Joy tried to make us feel better about the house, but when Disgust gasped, “Is that a dead mouse?!” I knew we were in the wrong place. Dead rodents can carry viruses that are
incredibly lethal!

Once again, Joy jumped in and reminded us the place would look better with Riley’s things, and I could imagine that. I could picture her hockey lamp on her bedside table, tethered down so
it didn’t fall on Riley’s bed during an earthquake. And I could imagine her posters stuck on the walls with double-sided tape—not pins. Pins could become dangerous projectiles or
stick Riley’s fingers while she was using them. The more I thought about it, the less I hyperventilated, and that was good.

Then Dad said the moving van was lost and wouldn’t show up for a couple days.

Back to hyperventilating.

“The van is lost?!” I wailed. “This is the worst day ever. San Francisco is terrible. And Mom and Dad are stressed out—even worse!”

Then there was the pizza debacle. There’s nothing more frightening than finding a small tree on an otherwise perfectly normal plate of food, but that’s exactly what happened. Riley
and Mom went to the nearest pizza place and found
broccoli
on the pizza. I was terrified. If a pizza could have broccoli, it could have
anything
. It could have anchovies. Or
liverwurst. Or roadkill.

Again, Joy calmed the rest of us down. She’s really good at that. That’s why she’s usually the one driving. She showed us memories of Riley and our trip, and I was especially
calmed when I remembered that Riley, Mom, and Dad all stayed securely belted into their seats the whole trip. That was important. But when the memory we were watching turned blue, I froze.

Not literally. It wasn’t cold or anything, although there
is
a lot of fog in San Francisco, which is both cold
and
dangerous. What I’m saying is that I froze with
fright because I’ve never seen a memory turn blue before. And I don’t know about you, but I prefer only seeing things that I
have
seen before. That way I know if they’re
good or bad. New things are way too unpredictable and are far too likely to be dangerous.

I turned around and saw that Sadness was touching the memory. “She did something to the memory!” I said.

Joy did the right thing. She stepped in and took the memory away from Sadness, but the sphere stayed blue.

“Oh…change it back, Joy!” I urged her.

She tried to rub the blue off but couldn’t, which meant the memory would stay sad forever.

Sadness never had that kind of power before. What did it mean? Had Sadness become a monster? Would she start turning all of Riley’s memories blue? Would she turn
us
blue?

It seemed to me that Sadness was suddenly very dangerous. And she proved it only a minute later. Riley was about to do one of her favorite things…slide down a railing! I know, it’s
totally unsafe and not on my approved activities list. So I was secretly pleasantly surprised when Riley suddenly decided to forego the railing and walk down the stairs. But it wasn’t my
doing.

“Wait, what?” Joy asked. “What happened?”

I saw it at the same time Joy did. A core memory—one of the main memories that makes Riley who she is and powers her Islands of Personality—
rolled on the floor and stopped at
Joy’s feet
!

“A core memory!” I screamed.

“Oh, no,” Joy gasped.

And it wasn’t just any core memory—it was the one that powered Goofball Island,
which had gone dark
. That’s why Riley hadn’t slid. She couldn’t be a goofball
without Goofball Island. And even though I appreciated that she’d be safer if she never acted like a goofball, that wasn’t Riley!

I watched Joy run to the core memory holder. Sadness was standing next to it.

“Sadness!” Joy snapped. “What are you doing?”

“It looked like one was crooked,” Sadness said, “so I opened it and then it fell out! I…”

Joy got the memory back in place and Goofball Island lit up again. Riley happily slid down the railing, but I was worried. Why was Sadness messing with important core memories? She
wouldn’t stop, either! When Joy asked why she did it, Sadness said, “I wanted maybe to touch one.” And even as she said it, she reached out to a core memory and it
started to
turn blue
! She was tainting the core memory! Who can function with tainted memories?

I was not okay with that. Not okay at all. I figured it was something about San Francisco. Maybe Sadness was allergic to the place. Maybe that’s why she was acting so strange.

San Francisco wasn’t suiting Mom and Dad, either. They both sounded so upset when they talked about the missing moving van or Dad’s work…I didn’t like it. I didn’t
like staying in Riley’s new room with the ceiling that sloped down like a snowy mountain right before an avalanche. And I didn’t like sleeping on the creaky floor in a thin sleeping bag
that had been in storage for so long it was probably teeming with bedbugs. Did you know that mattresses get heavier over time because they fill with dust mites and dead skin? It’s true! And I
bet the same thing happens with sleeping bags. We were probably cuddled up with hordes of mites, all of which were just waiting to jump out and bite us in the middle of the night. And what about
the weird glow of lights zipping across the room? Were they just cars passing by on the street, or were they something more sinister? And what about all the weird night noises? How did we know San
Francisco didn’t have bears?

“This move has been a bust,” Anger said that first night, and I agreed.

“That’s what I’ve been telling you guys!” I said. “There are at least thirty-seven things for Riley to be scared of right now!”

“The smell alone is enough to make her gag,” said Disgust.

“Look, I get it,” said Joy. “But we’ve been through worse! Tell you what: let’s make a list of all the things Riley should be HAPPY about.”

Well, none of us could think of a single happy thing. But Joy wouldn’t give up.

“Okay, I admit it,” she said. “We had a rough start. But think of all the good things that—”

“No, Joy,” Anger snapped. “There’s absolutely no reason for Riley to be happy right now. Let us handle this.”

“I say we skip school tomorrow and lock ourselves in the bedroom,” I said. It seemed like a great idea to me. Then Riley’s bedroom door creaked open. Was it a psycho killer?
The world’s biggest dust mite?

No, it was Mom. She came in to thank Riley for being such a happy kid and making the move easier.

So I guess Joy knew what she was doing, even if I couldn’t always see it right away. But we were on board and ready to support her. From then on, we’d be Team Happy! (Yep, I came up
with the name by myself…not to brag or anything.)

The next day was the first day at the new school, and Joy had jobs for all of us. Mine was making a list of the possible negative outcomes on the first day of school, but Joy didn’t
realize I’d been working on that since the moment we had left Minnesota. I was on page fifty, and I really felt like I had only scratched the surface.

Oooh, scratched. Scratching. Itching.
Hives!
We could get
hives
on the first day of school!

I added that to the list. I felt pretty prepared, but when it came to the moment to walk into school, I lost my nerve.

“Are you sure we want to do this?” I asked Joy.

“In we go!” she demanded.

“Okaaaay!” I agreed. “Going in! Yes.”

By the time we got to class, I was ready to make my full report to Joy. “Almost finished with the potential disasters,” I told her. “Worst scenario is either quicksand,
spontaneous combustion, or getting called on by the teacher. So as long as none of those happen…”

“Okay, everybody,” Riley’s teacher said. “We have a new student in class today.”

“Are you kidding me?” I wailed. “Out of the gate? This is not happening!”

“Riley,” the teacher kept going, “would you like to tell us something about yourself?”

“Nooooo!” I screamed. “Pretend we can’t speak English!”

Joy didn’t listen to me. She took the controls, and she was going to get Riley through it just fine. At least, it seemed that way. Joy even took out a memory for Riley to think about to
help her talk about home, which was really nice. It was a memory of Riley skating with Mom and Dad on our favorite frozen lake. As I watched Riley handle everything on the view screen in
Headquarters, I almost forgot how terrified I was.

Then the image on the screen turned blue.

Uh-oh. Bad. Very bad. And wrong. What was going on? We all turned around and saw that Sadness had her hand on the memory. I had wondered up until then if Sadness had undergone some horrific
transformation. Now I knew for sure she had turned. Sadness had become a MEMORY-CHANGING MONSTER!

Riley’s happy memory from home had turned completely blue and sad, and the more Riley thought about it, the more upset she got.

“Get it out of there, Joy!” I demanded.

Joy tried to wrench the memory from the projector, but she couldn’t. Meanwhile, everyone in class was staring at Riley like she was from another planet!

“Did you see that look?” I shouted frantically. “They’re judging us!”

Disgust, Anger, and I all tried to help Joy remove the memory, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like Sadness had put some kind of superglue spell on it.

“Everything’s different now,” Riley said as she kept talking to her class. “Since we moved…”

And then I saw it. The worst thing imaginable.

“Oh, no!” I wailed. “We’re crying at
school
!”

I ran in wild circles. If I kept moving, maybe I could run so fast I could turn back time and none of this would have happened. The only thing that made me stop was the sound of a new memory
sphere rolling into Headquarters.

It was a blue memory. And it was rolling toward the core memory holder.

“It’s a core memory!” I gasped.

We’d
never
had a blue core memory. I could tell Joy didn’t like it any more than I did, because she fought to keep it from getting into the holder while Sadness fought to get
it
in
the holder.

I hate fighting. Fighting leads to injury, which leads to infection, which leads to death. But I wanted Joy to win this one. Instead, nobody won, because as they fought, they jostled the core
memory holder and
all five core memories
…

I can’t even say it. It’s too terrible to even put into print.

Okay, I’ll say it, but I warn you, I’m writing this with my eyes closed so I don’t have to see the words.

ALL FIVE CORE MEMORIES SPILLED OUT!

Translation? ARMAGEDDON!

Everything that happened next was a blur, mainly because I went into a semi-unconscious state to deal with the stress. I know Joy went after the yellow core memories, and I heard Sadness
shouting about her blue core memory, and then there was some accident with the vacuum tube, and then my entire life flashed before my eyes, and then I heard some more shouts and screams, and then I
nearly passed out so I had to put my head between my knees for a second…

…and then it was all over.

Sadness, Joy, and the core memories had been sucked away.

Without the core memories to power them, the Islands of Personality went dark.