Driven by Emotions by Elise Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

and first I needed
to find Sadness. But where? I darted back into the Long Term Memory shelves and noticed all the memories on the bottom shelves were blue—as though someone very sad had been running her hands
over them as she walked.
    “Sadness!” I called, and took off running, following the blue path. Soon I found her, far up ahead, and I knew she’d run to me when I called her, and we could get to
Headquarters right away. “Sadness! Sadness!”
    Sadness turned and saw me, but instead of running toward me, she ran away.
    “Sadness!” I cried.
    “Just let me go,” she said. “Riley’s better off without me.”
    “Come back!” I wailed, but Sadness was still running, and she had a huge head start. I chased her all the way through Long Term Memory and into Imagination Land. She lost me in the
French Fry Forest, then I found her again in Cloud City but she grabbed a cloud and soared too far overhead for me to catch her. Soon she was floating above the remnants of Family Island, which at
this point was little more than some debris and the trampoline that used to support the whole structure.
    The trampoline…
    I suddenly had the craziest idea ever in the history of crazy ideas. I ran to the Imaginary Boyfriend Generator I’d seen earlier when Bing Bong had taken Sadness and me on the Imagination
Land tour. The boyfriend was still moping next to it, peeling petals off a flower.
    “You!” I said. “Did you mean what you said before?”
    “I would die for Riley!” he moaned. “I would die for Riley. I would die—”
    “Yeah, yeah.” I shushed him. “Time to prove it.”
    I scooped the imaginary boyfriend into my bottomless satchel, then started up the generator to turn more and more of them out. As they came down the conveyer belt, I caught each one in my
satchel. Then I ran along the cliff’s edge toward Friendship Island. Once I had Sadness in sight, I aligned myself with her and poured out all the imaginary boyfriends from the satchel. They
quickly stacked up below me—standing on each other’s shoulders—until they formed a very wobbly tower. And I was at the very top!
    “Whoa!” I yelled. The tower was so unsteady I nearly fell!
    “This is crazy, this is crazy…” I muttered to myself. “No, no, no! Joy! Be positive!”
    I made the mistake of looking down again.
    “I am positive that this is crazy!” I said.
    I looked out at the trampoline on Family Island, then at Sadness floating just past it, and then at Headquarters high above her. If I just timed everything right…
    “NOW!” I yelled.
    All the imaginary boyfriends leaned forward, launching me onto the Family Island trampoline. I bounced off it, then zoomed into the air at the perfect trajectory to catch Sadness.
    “Joy?” she said, surprised.
    “Hang on!” I cried, because we weren’t done yet. We were still soaring up, up, up…until we
smacked
into the window of Headquarters.
    We quickly slid
down
the window and, at the last second, grabbed the window ledge. I then managed to reach up and bang on the window until I saw Fear, Anger, and Disgust rush over. They
were all wide-eyed with shock.
    That was when I realized a little error in my plan. The windows of Headquarters don’t open! How were they going to let us in?
    I honestly have no idea how it happened but, suddenly, a giant circular hole appeared in the window, big enough for Sadness and me to climb through.
    “Thank goodness you’re back!” Fear cried.
    I looked past him and saw what was happening with Riley on the view screen.
    She was on a bus, all by herself. Running away. And I knew I couldn’t stop her on my own.
    “Sadness,” I said, “it’s up to you.”
    “Me?” she asked. “I can’t, Joy.”
    But I knew she could. I led her to the console. It was her turn to drive. She held her hand over the controls and removed the idea bulb. Riley’s face changed. It went from pinched and
angry to open and sad. Her eyes welled. And after a minute, she