by Elise Allen
Riley remembered all of these moments and began to cry.
“I know you don’t want me to,” she sobbed, “but I miss home. I miss Minnesota. You need me to be happy, but I want my old friends back, and my hockey team. I wanna go home. Please don’t be mad.”
They weren’t. Mom and Dad saw how sad she was and they just comforted her. They said they missed home, too. And even though all three of them were really sad, they were sad together. And that was kind of…joyful.
As Riley, Mom, and Dad all hugged, I gave Sadness her blue core memory which I had retrieved from the Memory Dump. Sadness smiled at me and took my hand. She led me over to the console and placed my hand next to hers, so we could drive together.
PING!
I knew that wonderful sound. A new core memory was being created! And it was like no other memory we had seen before. Instead of being a single color, this core memory was blue and gold, all swirled together. The other Emotions and I stared in awe as the new core memory sphere rolled into Headquarters and settled in the core memory holder. Then a lightline emerged from the back of Headquarters into the Mind World, generating a brand-new Family Island! It was far bigger and even more beautiful than the original one.
I rested my head on Sadness, and we both smiled. Riley was going to be just fine now. And so were we.
So, you know, that was a little while ago, and since then things have changed a lot in ol’ Headquarters. The core memories? They’re not all golden yellow anymore. Each one is made of swirls of all of our colors. And that’s had a huge impact on the new Islands of Personality. They’ve all grown back now, and they’re better than ever! Friendship Island has expanded, and recently opened a Friendly Argument section, which Anger loves. Sadness has a particular fondness for Tragic Vampire Romance Island. Boy Band Island…we’re kind of hoping that one’s just a phase, but honestly, I’m thrilled with all of it. And we even have a new, expanded console with so many kinds of buttons and levers and gadgets. The best thing about it is that it has space for all five of us to drive together at the same time. Turns out we make an amazing team.
Everything is pretty fantastic. And I feel like we really have it all together now, just like Riley. Our girl is amazing. She has great new friends, a great new house…things couldn’t be better. After all, Riley’s twelve now. What could happen?
Ugh, okay, I guess I’m supposed to tell you about the big move to San Francisco and how Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and I ended up working together at one big console (a console that gives us nowhere near enough personal space, if you ask me). Fine. Whatever. Here goes.
So the whole thing started when Riley was a baby. That’s when I showed up, and seriously, I’m not sure how the girl got along without me. From what I hear, they were feeding Riley mysterious mushy green stuff before I hit the scene, and that is not acceptable. I got there around the time of solid food, and believe me, if it wasn’t brightly colored or shaped like a dinosaur, there was no way I was letting Riley eat it. Broccoli for example? Immediate spit-out.
So life was what it was and it all worked out fine for Riley, because I was so ready to step in and save her from anything disgusting, including out-of-fashion clothes and bad music. Not on my watch.
Then came the news that we were moving from Minnesota to San Francisco.
Are you kidding me?
First of all, we took the trip in a station wagon. No one looks cool in a station wagon. Why couldn’t Mom and Dad have rented an awesome convertible for the trip? And to make matters worse, we were in that station wagon for just this side of forever. Do you have any idea how many smells three people generate when they’re in a small space for that long? Gross! Then we finally got to San Francisco…um…have you ever seen that place? All those murals on the walls, like anyone wants to see bad public art. I swear, some of the buildings looked like they were made of garbage, and the hills…I can’t with the hills. I just can’t.
So we got to the city, and then we found Riley’s new house, which was basically an abomination of dirt and grime stuck together with termite saliva. That was the outside. It smelled like something died on the inside. You know why? Because something did. We saw a dead mouse. Not acceptable. The only thing that would have made it even remotely okay was a full sanitizing followed by a major decorating plan that involved every one of Riley’s cutest possessions, but you know what? The moving van with all those possessions had gone missing. Horrifying, and horrifying again. We were left with no barrier between us and the cramped prison cell that was now Riley’s room.
Joy thought we’d feel better if we had a great lunch, and she suggested a pizza place we saw on the way into town. I’m all for pizza. It’s totally on my acceptable list, especially if it has cheese that’s gooey enough to stretch, but not so gooey it breaks off and dangles down Riley’s chin until it looks like she’s spitting it up. But this San Francisco pizza place? It put broccoli on the pizza! That’s not food, it’s torture! And it was the only option they had! I wasn’t sure what to do first: grab my barf bag or call the health inspector and let him know the place was shoving out poison.
The clear verdict? Moving to San Francisco was a horrible disaster and the worst decision Mom and Dad had ever made. Fear, Anger, and I were beyond upset, but then Joy showed us some hysterical memories, and that was pretty fun. If I could have just watched those, I would have forgotten all about the Broccoli Pizza Monster, and everything would’ve been fine.
But then something weird happened. We were all looking at a funny memory when, suddenly, it turned blue and sad. Doesn’t make sense, right? So we turned around and saw Sadness touching the memory. I was completely disgusted. I mean, the memory was of Dad forgetting to put the emergency brakes on the station wagon and letting it roll into a dinosaur tail. That’s brilliant stuff! But Sadness had wrecked it!
“Good going, Sadness,” I said. “Now when Riley thinks of that moment with Dad, she’s gonna feel sad. Bravo.”
Sadness had never done much around Headquarters before. Seriously, she was like this blue lump. And not only did she leave puddles of tears on the ground, she was starting to change happy memories to sad ones! Gross. I totally got it when Joy told Sadness to keep her paws off the memories.
At the same time, if Sadness was freaking out, I totally got that, too. I didn’t like anything about this move, either. And that night, instead of sleeping in her own beautiful room back in Minnesota, Riley was in a sleeping bag on the floor of her new tiny, dust-covered, mouse-apocalypse room. Ugh! I was over it. Totally over it. Then Mom came in to kiss Riley good night, and she was all, “Thanks, Riley, for being so happy when our whole life rots and we made this hideous decision to move to this place of doom.” I might be paraphrasing. Point is, she was pretty cool about Riley’s attitude in the face of all this change and upheaval, so I felt like Joy knew what she was doing with her whole stay-happy-no-matter-what deal.
I went to bed after that. Any time I could spend not awake in San Fran-sick-o was time well spent. Plus I needed the rest. The next day was the first day of school, which is basically a giant experiment in social horror. I had to get Riley completely prepared with the right outfit and the right things to say if she was going to get in with the cool kids and have any kind of life whatsoever.
The next morning, we all rallied in Headquarters, and Joy gave us jobs.
“Disgust,” she said, “make sure Riley stands out today…but also blends in.”
Oh, please. Like I wasn’t already on that like algae on an unclean pool.
“When I’m through,” I said, “Riley will look so good the other kids will look at their own outfits and barf.”
I totally delivered. Riley had a super-cute outfit, a cool backpack with a funky pattern, and great styled hair that bounced from side to side as she walked. Riley walked into the school with confidence and just enough swagger to intrigue other kids, not turn them off. She had a smile that said “I’m fun” as opposed to “I’m desperate.” She was ready.
“Okay, we’ve got a group of cool girls at two o’clock,” I said as I watched Riley’s progress on the big screen.
“How do you know?” Joy asked.
“Double ears pierced, infinity scarf…” Please. It was so obvious. Then they turned and looked at us, and one of them was wearing eye shadow. “Yeah,” I told Joy, “we want to be friends with them.”
Then Joy said she wanted to go talk with them! And I was like, “Are you kidding? We’re not talking to them. We want them to like us!”
Riley had a shot at it, too. She was playing it totally cool. Even when the ridiculous teacher put her through the torture of talking about herself in front of the entire class—whatever—Joy had it under control. She recalled a memory of Riley and her parents skating together. Then Riley started talking about Minnesota, and playing hockey. It scored major cool-girl points, I could tell.
Then, out of nowhere, she got all sniffly and sad.
“We go out on the lake almost every weekend. Or we did,” Riley said, “‘until I moved away.”
Our view screen in Headquarters turned completely blue. We all spun around, and Sadness had her hands on the memory sphere. Like, what was she thinking?! You couldn’t make Riley sad at a pivotal moment like this! She was practically on stage, auditioning to be part of the social hierarchy, and thanks to Sadness, she was now totally blowing it. Joy frantically pushed buttons on the console to remove the sphere from the projector, but it wouldn’t budge! And Riley was falling apart.
“We used to play tag and stuff…” she sniffed.
Tag?! You don’t talk about a baby game to your new classmates! I scanned the room around Riley. It was bad.
“Cool kids whispering at three o’clock,” I said.
Somebody had to do something. Joy, Fear, Anger, and I tried to pull the stuck memory from the projector, but it wouldn’t budge!
Riley, meanwhile? Full-on sobfest. Very bad. It was a moment that everyone watching would still be talking about at their twenty-year high school reunion. “Remember that lame kid who sobbed in front of us on her first day of school?”
Yeah, that’s where we were headed. And to cap it off, Sadness was now driving the console. Joy finally yanked the stuck memory out of the projector and pulled Sadness off the console. That’s when it happened. Oh, yeah. We all saw it roll into Headquarters.
“It’s a core memory!” Fear wailed.
“But it’s blue!” I sneered. I mean, seriously, since when does Riley have blue core memories? She doesn’t. They’re all yellow. Blue doesn’t even go with the color scheme in the core memory holder. Clearly Joy agreed with me, because she ran to the core memory holder and popped it up, causing the sphere to hit the edge and roll back.
Then she grabbed the blue core memory and pushed a button to lower the vacuum tube that sends all the memories down to Long Term. She was going to get rid of it! But then Sadness tried to grab it back from her. It got so crazy between them that they—and you’re not going to believe this—bumped the core memory holder and the five core memories spilled out.
It was totally freaky to see them rolling around on the floor. I screamed, and not much outside a bloody hangnail makes me scream. Then all of Riley’s Islands of Personality went dark. And that was a huge problem. The islands make Riley Riley. If they were down, who would she become? It was true horror movie material. And since horror movies are generally gross, I really didn’t like where things seemed to be heading.
I didn’t know what to do. I watched as Joy scrambled to gather the five yellow core memories. Sadness grabbed the new blue one and tried to put it into the core memory holder, but Joy lunged at her! As they began pushing each other back and forth, they got super close to the vacuum tube…
And then they both got sucked inside!
For a moment, I thought they’d get stuck and plug it up, but they didn’t. They disappeared completely. Who knew where they’d end up…somewhere deep in the Mind World.
Fear, Anger, and I just stood there for a minute, watching the spot where they’d left.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Anger finally roared. “They left us here with a whole ruined school day to handle!”
“I know what to do!” Fear cried. “Let’s curl up in the fetal position and hide!”
That’s what he did. Curled up in a ball and shut his eyes, because I guess he figured if he couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see him. Whatever.
“You’re not hiding, Fear,” I said. “Come on, we have to take the controls until Joy comes back.”
“Will she come back?” Fear asked. “WILL she?!”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course she will. Where else would she go?”
And seriously, in the meantime, we needed to do something about Riley. After a little maneuvering, we got her sitting back at her desk and had her disappear in a book. It was a textbook, which wasn’t ideal. I’d rather she’d had her nose in some super-hip postapocalyptic novel, ideally one that was made into a movie, but we used what we had.
Honestly, we didn’t have a lot of time to take stock and think until Riley was having dinner. Up until then we were just working overtime to get her through the school day. Anger had her snap at a bunch of kids who kept tapping their pencils on the desk, Fear got her all freaked out when she found cobwebs in her locker, and don’t even get me started on how I handled the cafeteria lunch at Riley’s new school. Tortilla soup? A tortilla is a flat slice of not-bread. How do you make it into a soup? Even if you pounded it up and pulverized it into a soup, you wouldn’t get cheese and red goo out of it. What is the red goo, anyway? Thank goodness I’m here to ask these questions.
Then came dinnertime. Joy and Sadness still weren’t back, so it was just me, Fear, and Anger in a Headquarters that felt completely bleak with no core memories. Not a pleasant work environment, and I made sure Anger and Fear knew I was working under duress in less than ideal conditions.
Fear had a brilliant idea, and by brilliant, I mean absurd. He said all we had to do until Joy got back was to be just like her. “Just do what Joy would do,” he said.
“Great idea,” I muttered. “How are WE supposed to be happy?”
Before we could figure that out, Mom started yammering about a new hockey team and tryouts tomorrow. She needed a response. Anger looked at me, like I would know what to do.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“You pretend to be Joy,” said Fear.
Ugh. Gag me. But Fear pushed me to the console, so I had no choice. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.” I took the controls, and when Mom started getting giggly about hockey again—like we’d even care about hockey after the day we’d had—I had Riley roll her eyes and say, “Oh, yeah, that sounds fantastic.” Then Fear got all up in my grill because I didn’t sound like Joy, but for real—I’m not Joy.
I thought that would be it, but Mom didn’t give up. She thought something was wrong with Riley—which, hello, it totally was, but Mom would never understand. She started asking lots of questions and looking for deep, meaningful answers. I was over it, so I turned the controls to Fear. Let him be Joy and see how it worked for him.
In a word? It didn’t. Mom asked how school was and Fear had Riley basically curl up in a ball and hide.
“It was fine, I guess. I don’t know,” she said.
Pretty much just like Joy. Not. So then Anger tried to be Joy. That caused a full-on meltdown that got Riley sent to her room without dessert. Complete disaster. Then, a little later that night, Dad came into her room to try to make things better. He started acting silly and goofy, which normally would start up Goofball Island, but Goofball Island was dark. And you know what happens when you start up a broken island?
Of course you don’t. I didn’t either. Turns out it crumbles and falls to pieces. We saw it all happen from Headquarters. So that left Riley’s mind filled with what? Rubble. Rubble in her head. How gross is that? Clearly we needed Joy back. She’d know how to de-rubble-ify the place. Without her, we wer
e just winging it, and I don’t do the improv thing.
Still, we had to try to keep things together. So that night, when Riley’s best friend from home, Meg, called Riley on her laptop, Fear, Anger, and I were ready at the console. I figured it would be easy girl stuff, nothing too difficult. I mean, Riley and Meg had known each other forever. We could handle a simple conversation.
But then you know what Meg said? Riley asked about the hockey play-offs because she and Meg had been on the same team, and Meg was all, “Oh, we’ve got this new girl on the team. She’s so cool.”
She was saying that to us for real? How gross is that? Just throw your new BFF in our face, am I right? Anger was furious. Fear was freaking out. I was nauseated, but I tried to keep it under control because I could see out the window that Friendship Island was having a minor earthquake over the conversation and was in major danger of crumbling.
No use. Meg got Anger too furious. I saw it coming the minute Meg said, “We can pass the puck to each other without even looking. It’s like mind reading.”
“You like to read minds, Meg?” Anger roared. “I got something for you to read, right here!”
“Hey, hey, no!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”
Anger had Riley yell and slam her computer shut…and we lost Friendship Island. More mind rubble.
The next day we had school again. Seriously? Who came up with the whole school-five-days-a-week thing? I mean, it’s overkill. Riley already needed a weekend to decompress. Instead, she had to trudge through this sea of judging kids. Each one of them stopped to point and gawk at the new kid who cried in class.