"Are you kidding me?! Jackie is SO much better. One, she isn't bald," Disgust states, counting off of her fingers, "because that is totally gross. Two, she isn't an old man who takes pleasure in torturing his own son. Speaking of which, Eric is a creep AND a wimp. I wonder if he gets it from his dad, or if it's beaten into him." Disgust and Anger were having an argument over who is better, while Fear stands by and takes the hate for liking Eric.
Joy wasn't having this, so she quickly tries to change the topic. "But what about Kelso, eh? You can't deny that Ashton Kutcher looked great 15 years ago," she said, quickly pulling up a memory of Kelso from the show.
"Joy, he was literally classified as 'a whore.' I don't know what that is, but it sounds like it might give you bad publicity."
"Let me give you a hint; he gets it from his girlfriend," Anger quips, despite not knowing what a whore is either.
Disgust gasps, shocked. "How about we look that up before we realize it's a compliment?"
"Already on it," Joy says, pushing a few buttons and spinning a handlebar.
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Riley, now strangely puzzled by a certain word, brings up a new tab and types in "whore." Riley clicks on the top search result and heads to the Merriam-Webster website.
Definition of WHORE1
: a woman who engages in sexual acts for money; an immoral woman
2
: a male who engages in sexual acts for money
3
: anyone online who disagrees with you
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Riley's thoughts:
Well, that's an interesting word.
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"YOU'RE A WHORE!"
"NO, YOU'RE A WHORE!"
Anger and Disgust were now going off on each other in a fury. Eventually, after a few rounds of this, Anger's flames burst out in a blaze of glory and make another burn in the ceiling. Once he's finished burning his frustration off, he looks guiltily at Joy. "Oh, uh, sorry about that, Joy. I know how you feel about swear words. And, uh, the burn in the ceiling..."
"Don't worry about it, Anger. The mind workers clean up those burns all the time," Joy replied carelessly.
"I know that."
"They don't."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. I think mom and dad are home," Joy says, rushing to the console to avoid the awkwardness caused by the breaking of the 4th wall.
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Riley gets up from her sleeping bag and goes downstairs, where her mom is putting the absent homework on the table and her dad is quietly mumbling over "The awful paperwork it took to retrieve the papers."
"Hey, honey," her mom started, her full attention on Riley, "do you want to start on this?" Mom says, pointing to the work on the table.
"Sure," Riley replies, quick to get it over with and have fun for the rest of the day. Riley walks to the table and sits down, while her parents pull up chairs and sit down.
Riley pulls out her first and favorite subject: Math. "You know, when I was a kid, I hated Math. Despite that, I did it, begrudgingly, of course, and now I run a business and I have a great wife and child," Dad said, quietly reminiscing back to his school days.
"Dad, I like Math," Riley said, chuckling.
"I'd like to hear you say the same thing once you start on Algebra. It's a brain twister," Dad said, emphasizing Algebra with a sort of resentment. Riley simply chuckled again, but quietly wondered what Algebra was.
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"What's Algebra?" Fear was quick to ask, curious yet cautious.
"I'm sure it's nothing," Joy replied, brushing it off entirely. "If Riley likes Math, she'll like Algebra, and I'll be there for her if she needs support."
FAST FORWARD
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed Anger.
RESUME
"I don't know. I have a really bad feeling about it," said Anger, rubbing the bit of chin that he could.
"Again, it's nothing, people. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Joy encouraged. "Right now, though, we need to explain Order of Operations."
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Riley looked at the homework and introduced the idea of Order of Operations to her parents, as they never had to learn it when they were in Middle School. "So, they actually made this weird sort of acronym to help remember it: PEMDAS. Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. This can then be turned into different sentences, like 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.'"
Riley's parents simply looked at her strangely. "I, uh, don't get it, Riley. Why does there have to be an order to it?" Dad simply said, a look of confusion controlling his face.
"Well, you see, let me write down an example," Riley said, grabbing a blank piece of paper and thinking for a second before writing the equation down.
"(6+2)^ 2*(25/5)-7," Riley muttered under her breath as she wrote. (A quick note: You may not recognize the caret symbol that is between the (6+2) and 2. In a calculator, you need this to add an exponent to a number when the exponent is higher than 2, or 3, in some cases. Since I was unable to use proper squaring, I simply used the caret symbol. I apologize for any confusion. Enjoy education!)
"Now, do either of you understand what I'm going about here?" Riley eyed her parents with a slight annoyance.
Said parents shook their head in denial.
"Well, you see, if the configuration were actually SADMEP, it would go like this," she said, writing down on the paper.
(6+2)^2*(25/5)-7
(6+2)^2*-2
(6+2)^-4
Riley stopped at this, secretly not knowing what to do in the case of negative exponents. "Now, I'm going to show you the right way." She returned to the paper and wrote down the same equation.
(6+2)^2*(25/5)-7
(8)^2*(5)-7
64*5-7
320-7
313
Riley looked up at her parents, expecting them to understand. "You know, honey. You seem to be capable of this very much by yourself. Your father and I will help you with the other homework when you're done with math," Mom said, clearly confused with what Riley was doing.
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"I can't believe they don't understand. I mean, IT'S RIGHT THERE! Did we not explain it perfectly, Joy?" Anger started, the particles above his head distorting, indicating a future eruption. Joy looked around, trying to find a way not to make her sound too enthusiastic.
"Well, we did our best, and it's a very difficult subject..."
Wrong move.
"IT'S NOT DIFFICULT! THE SECOND RILEY HEARD ABOUT THIS, SHE INSTANTLY UNDERSTOOD! ARE WE SOME SUPERCHILD OR SOMETHING?! ARE MOM AND DAD DUMB?!" Anger was spewing all over the place, finally rushing to the console and ramming forth the handlebars. Luckily, thanks to Riley's Family Island, the response was cushioned.
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Riley groaned, annoyed, at the response. "I thought you were smart!" Riley got up from the table and stormed upstairs, slamming the door behind her as she stomped into her room. She sat down on her sleeping bag and pulled out her computer, willing to start her History paper on The Panama Canal.
"Okay, so Mrs. Smith said that Wikipedia is not a credible source, so how about we settle for National Geographic," Riley quietly reasoned, typing ' ' into the search-bar and looking for any credible information. As she searched, something in the back of her mind was nagging at her.
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"Why did you do that?" Fear panicked. "Now Mom and Dad think we're mad at them."
"Because we are mad at them. That's kind of why I'm here," Anger said proudly.
"Anger, you do realize that you have to keep things fair, and nothing was unfair about it. In fact, you made it extremely unfair for THEM!" Disgust rebutted.
"Guys! Let's try and focus on a solution to this!" Joy said, immeasurably tense.
"Well, I don't know. I think that maybe Riley should make up with her parents," Sadness said softly.
"Are you kidding me? It's their fault they got themselves into this mess! Why do we have to go to them?" Anger fumed, pacing around and giving every other emotion the evil eye.
"Because what we did was wrong. You do realize that it's not their fault Order of Operations is difficult to them, right?" Joy questioned, much less willing to keep up the happy act if it meant that it would only frustrate Anger more.
Anger took a step back, appalled at his sudden realization. "No. No, I can't believe it. What did I do? We need to fix this."
"Already on it," Joy said, yet again, reaching for the console.
Sadness however, held out her arm in front of Joy in a motion to stop. "We need to think about this. We can't go down there, all happy like it's no big deal we called our parents idiots. We could potentially be afraid of the consequences of our actions, but is that a good thing?" Sadness continued to mumble, contemplating the situation. After a good few minutes, Sadness suddenly came to a conclusion.
"Fear, Anger. I want you two at the console to start, to make Riley hate herself, but only because she put herself in this position. Hopefully, if this works, she'll regret the things she said and be more understanding next time she works with another person. I'm going to have to take the wheel slightly for a sincere apology, and I'll need you, Fear, to keep me from taking too much control. Then, the instant Riley apologizes, I want you, Joy, to gently control Riley. It's still not too late, only 10:00 A.M., so we can get this all done today. Does everyone understand?" Everyone was, first off, shocked that Sadness had the strength in her to take lead. No one questioned and, instantly, Fear and Anger were at the console, pushing a myriad of buttons, trying to make Riley regret her decision.
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Riley's thoughts:
Wait, this isn't right. How could I just call Mom and Dad stupid like that? I don't want to upset them. I need to apologize.
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Riley rushed out of her room and was halfway down the stairs when Anger and Sadness switched roles in her head. She continued down the steps, feeling more shame than self-hatred now. "Mom, Dad?" Riley said softly from the bottom of the stairs.
Looking around, Riley spotted both her parents sat on the couch, solemnly snuggling up to each other. It broke Riley's heart that her parents were legitimately hurt by her words, and it made her want to apologize all the more. "I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of it. I should have been more patient with you two, and it wasn't right what I did. I'm really sorry," Riley caved, rushing to join the embrace between her parents, who silently repositioned to allow Riley into the hug.
Riley almost got a sort of satisfaction from apologizing, and realized that Riley had one last thing to get off of her chest. Still in the embrace, Riley looked up and, with a shameful expression, confessed to her parents. "The night that I almost ran away, I was going to take a bus back to Minnesota. I had to pay for the bus fare, so, um, I took your credit card when you weren't looking, Mom." Riley's parents looked, accepting, at the sincerely regretful expression on Riley's face.
"So, that's where it went. I'm glad that you told us, Riley," Mom said, torn between disappointment or relief. "Do you, by chance, have it on you?" Riley lit up a little at this. "Oh, yeah. It's in my coat pocket. I'll go get it." Riley stood up and rushed to her bedroom, where she had dropped her coat the night before.
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"Good work, everyone," Joy cheered. Everyone was feeling great about pulling the apology off. A core memory popped out of the side of the Headquarters into the travel mechanism. All the emotions stared, awesome, at the 4-colored orb. Red for Anger, yellow for Joy, blue for Sadness, and purple for Fear.
It rolled through, stopping at the splitting point between core memories and regular memories. It then proceeded down the railing, curving under the floor and arriving at the core memory bay. It took it's space as the second core memory and, from it, a new island formed.
Green, rolling hills led up to a courthouse, with several law-related attractions dotting the landscape. Instead of just Honesty Island things, though, there was now something new happening that none of the emotions had ever seen before. Honesty Island shook and slowly started to float towards Family Island, finally fixing itself into place besides it, connected. Soon, new land popped up around Family Island, making it even more massive.
All the emotions stared in awe at the combination of personality islands. Never before had the other personality islands interacted with each other like this. Sadness theorized that it was so one island could fall apart and still be held up by the other islands. At that, nobody argued her point, as it did seem Honestly Island could fail, and Family Island would probably hold it up.
After that, nobody talked, possibly for the same reason it was quiet last night. Everyone kept quiet and silently worked, helping Riley remember where she left her coat. Riley soon found her coat and was back downstairs.
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"Okay, here it is," Riley said simply, handing the card to Mom. She took a look at it and reinserted it into her wallet, then her purse.
"Okay, about money. That trip cost $150 dollars, so you can just pay that back right now. However, you can also choose to not pay back right now, and we'll save your weekly allowance for 15 weeks. As long as your father and I get the money back, we won't hold it against you., okay?" Mom explained casually.
Riley simply nodded and went back to the same coat. "I left about 300 dollars in here to help me get started in Minnesota," she said, pulling out the wad of cash and splitting the money 50/50. She then handed the money to Mom, who took it and put it, like her card, into her wallet, then her purse. "Glad that's behind us," she said calmly. "Now, do you want to get back to your homework?"
Riley nodded and sat herself down at the table again, going over everything that she needed to do (except Math) with her parents. After a lot of difficult Science work, Riley simply had to finish her paper and get a book from the library. "How about we finish Science and the paper, and we can go to the library and pick out a book?" Dad suggested. Riley and her mom agreed with the idea and were soon immersing themselves into the difficult Science work that Mrs. Smith (a different one) had concocted for the emotional pre-teen mind.
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