Free Vend U. by Nancy Springer Page A

buy something.” Of course he wanted to use the machine Jocelyn was at.
    And of course Jocelyn couldn’t let somebody else go first. “DON’T worry, be happy,” she sang, and she whipped out a big coin purse stuffed full of money. She plunked two quarters into the monster candy machine and jabbed the KitKat buttons about five times as hard as she would have had to.
    The yellow screen started flashing a black word: OWWW. At the same time the KitKat metal coil turned, which was what was expected, and next would come the thunk as the candy bar fell into the grab slot. Which it did. Except there were two thunks. THUNK THUNK. And we could see through the glass. We all saw. Two candy bars fell.
    “Lucky!” we yelled, and we were not happy that Jocelyn had gotten two candy bars, because after all, weren’t we nicer kids than she was? Then we all crowded forward to try and see if the vending machine would give us two candy bars too. But Jocelyn was quicker. She snatched her candy bars and jammed more quarters into the coin slot and whammed the buttons.
    GREEDY, AREN’T WE? the machine flashed, and now the display was traffic-light red. But it did it again. THUNK THUNK. Two KitKat bars.
    “Happy,” Jocelyn sang, “Be HAPPEEEEE,” and fast as fate, keeping control of the machine, she grabbed her candy bars and slammed in more quarters and hit the buttons again.
    Nothing happened. No thunk thunk. Not even one thunk.
    “Hey!” Jocelyn yelled. “Where’s my candy?”
    The display, which had gone sundown purple, flashed, YOU’LL GET FAT.
    “Hey!” Jocelyn started trying to shake the machine, which was so big and heavy she couldn’t rock it. “Gimme my candy bars!”
    Meanwhile some of us had moved off to the other machines, and we were kind of disgusted when we would get just one soda or whatever we paid for instead of two. But most of us were still watching Jocelyn shaking the candy machine. “For crying out loud, Jocelyn,” somebody said, “you’ve already got more candy than you put in money for.”
    YOU’LL GET CAVITIES, the machine told her.
    Jocelyn just got real mad. “I don’t care!” She started pounding on the machine with her fists, and Jocelyn knew how to hit hard. “Gimme my candy!” WHAM, she pounded, WHAM WHAM WHAM.
    PARDON ME . The machine’s display had gone pure velvety black with icy white letters.
    “Jocelyn, stop it,” somebody said. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”
    But the vending machine turned its big steely KitKat coil just a little bit. Just enough to let one KitKat bar slip down and hang from the tip of the coil by a corner of its wrapper, dangling behind the glass.
    “You snothead!” Jocelyn stopped pounding on the vending machine and stood panting. “You big fat buttface!” She got down on her knees, bent over and stuck her arm into the grab slot up to her elbow. She was trying to reach all the way up inside the machine and grab that KitKat bar. We could see her hand wiggling around like a lizard or something inside the glass at the very bottom edge. But she needed about eight or ten more inches to get to the KitKat bar. She scrooched down closer to the slot and twisted around and got her arm in there up to the shoulder and her hand snaked farther into the machine.
    Just as her fingertips touched that KitKat bar, all the metal coils sprang forward and grabbed her. All at the same time. We saw it. Her fingers shot wide open as those coils clamped onto her arm. And at the same time, that grab slot changed shape and opened up like a happy metal mouth, like a giant baby’s lips about to latch onto a monster pacifier or something. It all happened so fast Jocelyn didn’t even get time to scream before her head disappeared into that vending machine and that big metal mouth was slurping in the rest of her like it was inhaling a milk shake.
    A few kids screamed, but mostly we were all so surprised and fascinated that we hardly even made a noise, we just gawked. Anyway, it