Before it found out that Jocelyn was stronger.
Before Jocelyn took over.
“DON’T worry,” a voice floated across campus from somewhere and everywhere. “BEEEE happy.”
* * *
So far, the adults, the teachers and stuff, still haven’t caught on that there’s more than one Jocelyn. Even before Jocelyn came back from the vending machine, it always did seem like she was everywhere at once. So even if a teacher sees one of her throwing tacos in the cafeteria and a few minutes later sees another one of her putting lipstick on the guinea pigs in the science room, the teacher just figures that’s Jocelyn.
Her parents haven’t caught on yet either, because Jocelyn’s smart. One of her shows up for meals and bedtime—probably they all take turns—and the other Jocelyns grab food out of Kwik-Marts and stay out all night and generally do whatever they like.
And what they like to do the most is torture us.
They pour tapioca pudding into our bookbags. Several times as much as they used to, because there are several more Jocelyns than there used to be. They steal lunches. Lots of lunches because there are lots of Jocelyns. We never have figured out exactly how many Jocelyns there are. Somebody brave went back to look and there are none left in that big machine at Vend U. So we figure between six and nine.
They make paper airplanes and load them with Comet Cleanser and fly them. They yell “Mobile odor zone!” and spray us with Lysol. They climb into bathroom stalls and take Polaroids. Of boys too. In full color. Then show them to people. They grab embarrassing underwear out of gym lockers and send it up the flagpole. They hold kids down and paint their teeth with green nail polish.
“DON’T worry, BEEE happy,” they sing. And the funny thing is, they really do look happy. Not like before.
Not like when it was just one Jocelyn and all of us.
What’s really scary is, now that they have each other, we hate them and they don’t even care.
So they put salt in our drinks. Worms in our pockets. Nair in our hair.
One boy got so desperate because the Jocelyns kept putting posters on his back, I SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ARMADILLO NAMED SNOOGIE, that he actually crawled into a vending machine, the one with nail clippers Swiss Army spy cameras poker baseball fishing hats Parcheesi harmonicas rubber stamp printing presses folding bikes trips to Disney World. He crawled in there to get away from them.
He was never heard from again.
Vend U. Page 2
