Vend U. by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

VEND U.
    Nancy Springer
    We did not like Jocelyn.
    Jocelyn put tapioca pudding in our book bags. Jocelyn put Jell-O in our gym shoes. Jocelyn smeared Ben-Gay on toilet seats. In the boys’ room too. And if we were on a field trip and we all went into a convenience store to get snacks, Jocelyn would find whipped cream and squirt it all over the store and we’d all get kicked out and nobody would get any snacks.
    Jocelyn parked chewing gum on people’s heads. Jocelyn parked boogers on locker handles.
    Jocelyn beat people up. Boys too.
    If we drew faces in art class, Jocelyn would reach over and turn the noses into vacuum cleaners.
    We did not like Jocelyn. We stayed away from her. Nobody was her friend.
    So at first we were kind of glad about what happened with Jocelyn and the monster vending machine.
    * * *
    It was summertime. It should have been vacation from you-know-who. But our parents sent us to this summer arts day camp on a college campus and there she was. Jocelyn.
    Nobody wants to get sued so forget the name of the college. Let’s just call it Vend U.
    The college kids who were there for sports practice were so big they reached right over our heads in the lunch line. The campus was big. The buildings were big. But the vending machines were the biggest of all. In the cafeteria there was a whole wall that was nothing but vending machines standing shoulder to shoulder like huge metal football linebackers in black uniforms. With no heads. Humongous. Jocelyn was as tall as any of us but her nose just about came up to their coin slots.
    Right away she shoved in front of everybody. Of course we were all crowded in front of the vending machines. Like, arts camp is okay, but vending machines are LIFE. And we had never seen so many vending machines that sold so much STUFF. Not just candy and chips and soda and gum but coffee and ice cream and turkey dinner seafood cocktail buffalo wings buffet. And not just awesome stuff to eat, but nail clippers Swiss Army spy cameras poker baseball fishing hats Parcheesi harmonicas rubber stamp printing presses folding bikes trips to Disney World. We all stood bug-eyed with our mouths airing out, looking at that whole wall of hard plate glass bellies full of coiled metal guts with wonderful stuff in them, but Jocelyn didn’t waste any time looking. Jocelyn just tossed her head and got moving. Jocelyn was a tough slim girl like a motor always running, and when something made her stop she made noise. Right away Jocelyn ran all along the whole row of machines smacking her hands against all the buttons at once. She didn’t put any money in, just whacked buttons.
    “Stop it, Jocelyn!” somebody yelled.
    Whenever anybody tried to tell Jocelyn anything, she always grinned like a snake and whipped her head back and cranked open her mouth, which was always slimed with green bubble gum, and started to sing. What was really annoying was that she always sang the same thing. Which was what she did right then. She sang, “DON’T worry, BEEEE happy,” and she kept right on punching buttons.
    “Stop it! They don’t like it!” about six of us yelled at once.
    Which is weird, that we all yelled it at once, but we all felt it. The vending machines didn’t like it that Jocelyn disrespected them. They were big and tall with chests that stuck out even harder than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and they didn’t like it at all.
    Right in the center was a monster candy machine, the biggest vending machine of all, with one of those liquid-crystal displays that do words, like, TRY DOUBLE-YUMMEE NEW TEABERRY GUM. Usually those displays stay sort of dark greenish all the time. But when Jocelyn didn’t put any money in and whammed the Butterfingers buttons (F8) and the Nestle Crunch buttons (G10) at the same time, the display started to glow yellow, not happy yellow but a kind of watch-out yellow.
    “Stop that,” a girl said to Jocelyn.
    “Get out of the way,” a boy said. He had two quarters. “I want to