Raven was sitting on an arm chair in the leisure room with one of Hector’s books in her gloved hands. She was relatively absorbed in the whole thing, but the reverie of fiction was punctured by the sounds of grunting and cursing and the violence committed against a vending machine. A tall boy stood before the thieving machine with his back to her; he was punching the side of the machine and pushing buttons with ferocity, but all to no avail. Unwilling to part with its loot, the machine stood defiantly, sputtering and groaning, but without releasing the money or the candy bar.
A perfect portrait of petulance, all around.
Sliding the bookmark between pages, Raven set her novel aside and glided over to the vending machine. When she stood beside the boy, she glanced up at him over the rim of her glasses. “You’re going about this all wrong,” she explained. “This thing never responds to force. You have to coax.” Her gaze flickered up and down him—and once her gaze met his again, she nodded her head, gesturing that he ought to step aside.
Slipping her foot beneath the front of the machine for leverage, she reached around the back to help nudge the machine forward. It wasn’t much—just a small angle, but usually it helped do the trick. With one good pop of her hip against the front, a candy bar finally popped out from its spring-like prison, descending into the collector at the bottom. “There. See?” She patted the side of the machine. “Sometimes you don’t even have to put in a dollar to make that work; so long as you don’t fuss about what it spits out at you.”