Driven by Emotions Read online

  “Get it out of there, Joy!” Fear wailed.

  He was right. I had to get the memory out of the projector, even if I had to do it by hand. I yanked and tugged, but it was stuck tight.

  “Somebody help me,” I said, and Fear, Anger, and Disgust grabbed hold of the sphere, too. At least, we had Fear at first. He gave up and ran around in a panic when Riley got so sad she started to sob. I looked up at the console and realized why. Sadness was driving the console! That was worse than her touching a memory! With Sadness at the controls, there was no possible way Riley could recover from this. I had to get Sadness off the console immediately! With a mighty tug, I finally yanked the blue memory out of the projector, then ran to Sadness and pulled her away.

  But it was too late. With a PING! a blue memory sphere rolled into Headquarters.

  Everyone stopped and stared.

  “It’s a core memory!” Fear said.

  “But it’s blue!” Disgust gasped.

  They were both right. The memory was blue, and it rolled right toward the core memory holder.

  This was not acceptable. Riley couldn’t have a sad core memory. She couldn’t! It would change who Riley was fundamentally! I lunged for the button to pop up the core memory holder. With the holder raised, the new memory hit the holder’s side and couldn’t go in. Success!

  Now all I had to do was get this horrible blue core memory as far away from the core memory holder as possible. I pressed another button and lowered a vacuum tube from the ceiling—the same vacuum that sends Riley’s daily memories to Long Term for storage. I knew the memory wouldn’t cause Riley any trouble down there.

  But before I could get the memory sphere in the vacuum, Sadness tried to grab the memory away! I couldn’t believe it! She actually wanted to keep this blue core memory. I held the sphere tight, but so did Sadness. Surprisingly, she has a heck of a grip. I struggled to get the sphere away from her, but before I could, we bumped into the core memory holder.

  All five core memories spilled out.

  I think I stopped breathing.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” wailed Disgust, Fear, and Anger.

  Through the window, we saw all the Islands of Personality go dark.

  This was the biggest disaster ever. Ever. I stopped fighting Sadness for the blue memory sphere and scrambled to gather the five yellow core memories. Sadness held on to the blue one. She wanted to put it inside the core memory holder, but I wouldn’t let her. I lunged at the blue memory, and it slipped out of Sadness’s hands. I almost cried with relief as it got sucked up the vacuum tube to Long Term Memory. But then, suddenly, I slipped and dropped the yellow core memories! One of them rolled toward the vacuum tube.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I leaped to save it…and got pulled into the vacuum tube myself, along with all five of the yellow core memories!

  The tube whooshed me straight up out of Headquarters! The core memories were zipping along with me. I managed to corral them together, but it wasn’t easy. The fierce suction of the vacuum threatened to tear them away, but I kept them as close as I could.

  As I rocketed through the tube, everything around me was a blur. I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down. I didn’t know where I’d land. And then, suddenly…

  BLAM!

  I landed in a large cart of memory spheres. I could feel the spheres pushing into my back. Then I heard a scream. It was Sadness. I guess she’d been sucked up by the vacuum, too, and now she was falling toward me.

  THUMP!

  Ignoring her, I began frantically digging through the memory spheres that we were sitting on top of. I’d lost track of the core memories when I fell. I needed to get them back to Headquarters. If Riley lost the core memories, the Islands of Personality would be stopped forever, and then where would she be? More important…who would she be?

  “One…two…three…okay, got ’em,” I said as I balanced the five memories in my arms.

  I looked around. We were in the Mind World on the cliffs outside Long Term Memory. From there I could see all five Islands of Personality surrounding the giant tower of Headquarters, which seemed impossibly high and incredibly far away. The islands themselves were separated from each other, Headquarters, and the cliffs by the vast abyss of Riley’s Memory Dump.

  I jumped out of the cart and looked at Goofball Island. It was still completely dark. Sadness walked up behind me. “Riley’s Islands of Personality. They’re ALL down! This is bad,” she said.

  I assured her that we could fix it. “We just have to get back to Headquarters, plug the core memories in, and Riley will be back to normal.”

  “Riley has no core memories, no personality islands, and no—” Sadness suddenly gasped.

  “Wha—what is it?” I asked.

  “You! You’re not in Headquarters. Without you, Riley can’t be happy,” said Sadness.

  She was right. Riley would be miserable until I got back to Headquarters. There was no time to waste. We ran across the bridge that led to Goofball Island. When we made it to Goofball, we came to the lightline that connected the island to the core memory holder in Headquarters. The lightline was like a power cord, and it was also our ticket back home! We just had to walk across it. Easier said than done.

  Sadness didn’t like the look of that lightline. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. It was super thin, and if we fell from it, we’d end up in the Memory Dump—forgotten forever. I summoned all of my courage. “It’s not that high. It’s totally fiii-fine.” I took my first step out onto the lightline and nearly dropped one of the core memories! “Whoa…whoa!”

  Sadness inched her way out on the lightline after me.

  Suddenly, I heard an awful mechanical groan, unbelievably loud. I turned around, but what I saw seemed so impossible I almost didn’t believe it.

  Goofball Island had started to crumble.

  As I stared, huge sections of it broke off and crashed down into the Memory Dump. Then the lightline started to collapse, too! There was no way we were going to make it to Headquarters.

  “AHHHH! Go back! Run! Run! Run!” I yelled at Sadness.

  We ran as fast as we could back to the island, but it was disappearing faster now. We poured on the speed, ducking and dodging to avoid pieces of the collapsing island. We zoomed across the last remains of Goofball, tore over the bridge, and leaped back to the cliffs. Still, we weren’t safe. Goofball’s collapse made the cliffs unstable. I felt the ground slipping under my feet.

  “Come on, Sadness!” I screamed as I grabbed her arm. “Run!”

  She stumbled after me, and we made it to a more stable area just as the bridge and all of Goofball Island gave a final groan, collapsing into the emptiness below.

  As I watched the island sink like a lost iceberg, images of the Goofball part of Riley’s personality flashed in my mind. I saw her at three years old, giggling and spinning around until she fell. I saw her on Dad’s shoulders, giving herself a cotton candy beard. I saw the whole family making silly faces at each other while they jumped on a trampoline.

  That was all gone now. Riley would never have goofy times like that again.

  No. That wasn’t true. Riley would get Goofball back. I just had to return the core memories to the holder, and Goofball would grow back. Riley needed me to stay positive and take action, so I got to my feet and started marching.

  “Wait, Joy, you could get lost in there!” Sadness said. She raced to catch up and grabbed my arm.

  I looked ahead. Shelves stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see and towered overhead. They branched off into corridor after corridor of more shelves, each of which looked exactly like the others.

  Sure, yes, it looked a little daunting, but I was determined, and I was positive, and I knew I’d be able to handle it without a problem!

  “Think positive!” I told Sadness.

  “Okay. I’m positive you will get lost in there. That’s Long Term Memory. I read about it in the manual,” she replied.

  The manual! Of
course! All that reading Sadness did while standing in her Circle of Sadness in Headquarters was finally going to pay off. “Congratulations! You are the Official Mind Map!” I exclaimed. “Lead on, Mind Map!”

  “Okay,” Sadness said, flopping down. “Only, I’m too sad to walk. Just give me a few…hours.”

  Since she refused to get up and join me, I grabbed her leg and dragged her into the shelving maze. “Which way? Left?” I asked.

  “Right.”

  I turned right.

  “No, I mean go left. I said left was right. Like ‘correct.’”

  Why was everything so complicated with Sadness?

  I followed her directions and dragged her until, suddenly, everything went dark.

  “Oh, Riley’s gone to sleep,” Sadness said.

  “Okay.” I perked up. “Then nothing else can happen! By the time she wakes up, I’ll be back at Headquarters with the core memories.”

  That’s what I thought. But by the time Riley woke up, we were still trudging through Long Term. Riley has a lot of memories.

  I admit it, I was starting to get frustrated. I hadn’t given up hope, no siree, but being lost with Sadness while Riley’s entire personality was on the line…it was challenging. So when I heard voices up ahead, I dropped Sadness’s leg and raced to find them.

  It was two Mind Workers, and they were doing something with a vacuum cleaner, a clipboard, and some of Riley’s memories.

  “Phone numbers?” the first Mind Worker said. “She doesn’t need those. They’re in her phone.”

  “Forget it!” the other worker replied.

  And they sucked several of Riley’s memory spheres into the vacuum. To forget them! These weren’t just any Mind Workers, they were Forgetters—Mind Workers; who worked in Long Term Memory vacuuming up old memories. I had never heard of them before, but apparently they had been around a long time.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “You can’t throw those away! Those are perfectly good memories.”

  “Really,” one Forgetter clucked. “The names of every Cutie Pie Princess doll?”

  “Yes!” I shot back. “That is critical information! Glitterstorm, Honeypants, Officer Justice…”

  “Forget ’em!” the other Forgetter cried, and then the first one vacuumed them up!

  “Hey!” I objected. “Bring those back!”

  “They’re in the dump,” the Forgetter replied. “Nothing comes back from the dump.”

  “When Riley doesn’t care about a memory, it fades,” said the other Forgetter.

  “Fades?” I asked.

  “Happens to the best of ’em,” the Forgetter noted.

  Wow. I had always thought when Riley made a memory, she had it forever. It was a shame any memory would fade away. The idea almost made me sad.

  “This one will never fade,” said the Forgetter, chuckling, as he removed a sphere from the shelf.

  “The song from the gum commercial?” I asked. Of all memories to keep, that was the most ridiculous and useless one!

  The Forgetters explained that they liked to send it to Headquarters for no reason. They began to play it over and over again.

  “We all know the song. Okay, okay. Real catchy,” I said.

  Then one of the Forgetters replaced the memory on the shelf and tipped it backward. The memory got sucked up by a tube and sent straight to Headquarters.

  I’m sure Anger, Disgust, and Fear really appreciated that.

  I asked the Forgetters if they knew where I could find Friendship Island, but before they could answer, we all heard a terrible groaning noise. I followed the sound, running as fast as I could. What else was going wrong inside Riley’s mind? I turned a corner and stopped in my tracks.

  Friendship Island was crumbling to pieces!

  “Oh, not Friendship Island,” I said.

  “Riley loved that one. And now it’s gone,” said Sadness. Apparently she’d caught up to me. If it was up to her, we’d just sit against a shelving unit and mope, but that is not my style. Friendship Island might be gone—for the moment—but I could see Hockey Island in the distance, and I was sure once we got there, we could get to Headquarters. We’d have to go back through Long Term to find a bridge to Hockey, but if that’s what we needed to do, that’s what we’d do.

  CLONK.

  The noise rang out somewhere behind us. I turned and saw a huge pink elephant humming to himself as he picked memory spheres off the Long Term shelves.

  I walked right up to him. “Hello!” I said.

  The elephant froze for a moment and then sprinted off!

  “Wait! Hey! Wait!” I yelled.

  But the elephant wouldn’t stop. He just kept on running! We followed him around a corner and into a dead end. He frantically tried to climb a wall, but he wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “Um, excuse me?” I said.

  “AHHHHHHHH!” he screamed. He then grabbed a memory sphere from one of the shelves, throwing it in one direction and taking off in the other. After that he ran right into a cart of memories!

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied.

  There was something familiar about this odd creature. He looked like a pink elephant, but he also had a big, fluffy cat’s tail, and…

  “Hey, I know you! You’re Bing Bong! Riley’s imaginary friend! Riley loved playing with you. You two were the best of friends.” Then it dawned on me. Bing Bong could help us! “Oh! You would know! We’re trying to get back to Headquarters…”

  “You guys are from Headquarters?” asked Bing Bong.

  I nodded. “I’m Joy, and this is Sadness.”

  “Joy? THE Joy?” asked Bing Bong.

  I couldn’t help but feel a little flattered. Apparently I was famous in the Mind World!

  Bing Bong suddenly realized that if I was in the Mind World and not in Headquarters, Riley would never be happy. “We gotta get you back,” he said. “I tell you what…follow me!”

  “Oh, thank you!” I cried.

  As Sadness and I followed Bing Bong down a row of memory spheres, we began reminiscing about all the great times Bing Bong had with Riley. There was the time when they were in a band together, and the time when they played tag. But they had their best adventures in Bing Bong’s rocket. I remembered his rocket ran on song power! And not just any song…Bing Bong’s theme song that Riley wrote! Oh, those were the best times.

  A dull voice interrupted our reminiscing. It was Sadness. “What exactly are you supposed to be?” she asked.

  “You know,” Bing Bong replied, “it’s unclear. I’m part cat…part elephant…part dolphin.”

  I looked him over. I didn’t see any dolphin bits. “Dolphin?” I asked.

  He plugged his elephant trunk and made a noise exactly like a dolphin’s. It was pretty impressive. “What are you doing out here?” I asked him.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s not much call for imaginary friends lately. So, uh, you know, I’m…”

  “Hey, hey, don’t be sad,” I said. “When I get back up to Headquarters, I’ll make sure Riley remembers you!”

  “You will?” he asked, suddenly perking up.

  “Of course! She’d love that!”

  “Ha, ha! This is the greatest day of my life!” Bing Bong cried. He then started doing a little jig, which ended with him getting hurt. He began to cry, and candy tears poured out of his eyes.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sadness.

  “I cry candy,” said Bing Bong. “Try the caramel, it’s delicious.”

  Mmmmm! I reached out for one, but the five memory spheres I was holding began to slip.

  “Oh, here, use this,” said Bing Bong, emptying out the satchel he was carrying. Everything from a kitchen sink to a cat came tumbling out! Sadness and I stared at Bing Bong in amazement.

  “What? It’s imaginary,” said Bing Bong, and he handed the satchel to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, slipping the memories inside. “This’ll make it a lot easier to wal
k back to Headquarters.”

  “Walk?” Bing Bong said. “We’re not walking! We’re taking the Train of Thought!”

  Yes! The Train of Thought! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it! I’d used it just the other day to get those extra daydreams for the first day of school. The train ran from down here to Headquarters all the time!

  “How do we catch it?” I asked.

  “Well,” Bing Bong said, “it kind of goes all over the place, but there is a station in Imagination Land. I know a shortcut. Come on, this way!”

  Sadness and I followed Bing Bong through Long Term Memory until we came to a building that appeared to be some kind of warehouse or factory. When I looked through its window, I saw out the other side—and there was the train station!

  No wonder Riley had loved Bing Bong so much when she was little. He was brilliant!

  “After you,” he said, opening the door.

  Sadness grabbed my arm. “I read about this place in the manual,” she said. “We shouldn’t go in there. This is Abstract Thought. Let’s go around.”

  Leave it to Sadness to be negative. I looked to see how far it would be to go around. The answer? Super far! The building was huge! There was absolutely no good reason we shouldn’t listen to Bing Bong and take the shortcut.

  “Look,” I told Sadness, “we don’t want to miss the train. Bing Bong knows what he’s doing. He’s part dolphin. They’re very smart!”

  I gave her my happiest, most joyfully positive smile, and it worked. Sadness followed Bing Bong and me into the building. Score! Soon we’d be on the train and on our way back to Headquarters!

  Soon after we walked into the Abstract Thought building, the door slammed shut behind us.

  Unexpected, but nothing to worry about.

  Then all kinds of shapes floated up from the floor: little triangles and circles and rectangles of various sizes and colors. It was like standing inside a kaleidoscope. So beautiful.