Driven by Emotions Read Online Free PDF Page B

sometimes when she has a scary dream. We could scare her.”
    That was a terrible idea. Why make Riley feel terrified when we could make her feel happy? “We are going to make Riley so happy that she’ll wake up with exhilaration,” I
suggested. “We’ll excite her awake!” I looked through the costume rack and found a dog costume. It had two pieces—one for the back half and one for the front. I tossed
Sadness the back half of the costume. “Put this on,” I told her. “Riley loves dogs!”
    I gave Bing Bong the bag of core memories to hold. “Don’t let anything happen to these,” I told him. Then I tossed on the top half of the dog costume and led Sadness to the
side of the set. It was set up like a classroom, and when the scene started, I knew what they were doing—acting out Riley’s first day of school, when she cried in front of everyone.
    Who writes these scripts? Why would they show that to Riley when it was hard enough going through it in real life? Good thing I was on the scene to make things happier.
    I waited until the most dramatic point of the scene, when Riley was standing in front of everyone, and then Sadness and I loped onto the set. We pranced around just like a real puppy! I barked,
we trotted in circles, I made the puppy’s tongue lick Riley and all the other students…I was
adorable
! No way Riley could resist this. Sure, it’s true, the dial on the
wall said Riley was still asleep, but she couldn’t stay asleep for much longer. Not with this much fun going on, right?
    And it was about to get even better. I looked at Bing Bong, who was watching from backstage. “
Psst!
You’re on! Go!” Bing Bong pulled a rope that let a ton of balloons
fall from the ceiling, and another rope that set off a confetti cannon. Now it was a puppy dance party! Riley would spring awake and start dancing!
    “Joy, this isn’t working,” Sadness said from the back half of the dog, but I didn’t listen. I was dancing, Bing Bong was dancing…this was irresistibly fun!
    Then Bing Bong danced into a light…that crashed onto the stage…that made Sadness jump away from me—which made it look like the adorable puppy had split in half!
    Then there was chaos. Actors were running around to avoid the fallen light, technicians were trying to shoo Sadness and I offstage, and Bing Bong decided that was the perfect time to speak
directly to Riley and get them to be friends again.
    “Hi, Riley, it’s me! BING BONG!”
    “Joy, look!” Sadness said. “It’s working!”
    There was
nothing
working about it. At least, that’s what I thought. But when I looked where Sadness was pointing, I saw the dial on the wall had moved! Riley was slowly getting
closer to awake! Soon we’d be able to get out of there and hop back on the Train of Thought!
    “They’re trying to wake her up!” the director said, pointing to Bing Bong, Sadness, and me. “Call security!”
    Sadness and I ducked away and hid, but Bing Bong wasn’t as fast. A security guard put him in handcuffs and dragged him away. We watched from the shadows as the guard pulled Bing Bong out
of the studio and threw him through a thick, scary gate into a dark pit of a chamber. We heard Bing Bong’s screams getting softer and softer as he sunk down into the depths.
    “They threw him into the Subconscious,” Sadness said. “I read about it in the manual. It’s where they take all the troublemakers.”
    “He has the core memories,” I told Sadness. “We have to go after him.”
    Luckily, Sadness knew the way. We walked down as everything around us grew dim and then dark. Finally, we made it to another gate. Two guards were standing nearby, but they were deep in
conversation, so Sadness and I simply snuck past them and walked right up to the gate. Sadness rattled it and the guards spun around.
    “Hey! You!” one shouted.
    “Oh! You caught us!” Sadness said as if she was really upset about it.
    “Get back in there!” the other guard