Select cup size. Select strength. Select coffee flavor. Press start, or choose whip.
"Press start," Robin murmurs, her index finger poised over the button. "Or choose whip… whipped coffee?" It sounds riskier than she's willing to go today.
Today is a day of conservative choices. Today is a day of plain skinny jeans, black flats, and a T-shirt. Today is a day for an unremarkable ponytail. Today is not the day to attempt whipped coffee from the high school commons' questionable coffeemaker. She flexes her finger and thinks for a moment.
"Just push the button!" a male voice exclaims over her shoulder, and then there's a hand pushing hers out of the way, pressing "whip" before she can even react.
"What—hey!" she exclaims, stepping back and letting her eyes follow the length of the unfamiliar arm, until a tall blond boy with a fitted, button-down shirt and alarmingly tight jeans comes into focus. "I didn't ask your opinion, blondie!"
"You were hesitating. Never hesitate over crappy coffee. Just whip it." He laughs. "Whip it good."
"Wh—what?!"
"It's not too late. To whip it. Hello? Like the song?" He grabs the now-full cup from the coffeemaker and looks at the name tag still stuck to her shirt from this morning's New Student Orientation. "See ya 'round, Skerbatsby."
"Scherbatsky," she corrects instantly, then kicks herself. So much for anonymity.
"Scherbatsky," he repeats. He raises the stolen cup like a toast to her and walks off into the crowd of students, still chuckling.
She really hates senior guys.
~x~
She meets Ted, a fellow sophomore, almost immediately, and it's almost too easy—he helps her find the biology department, and afterward takes her to the cafeteria. She eats lunch with him and his friends Lily and Marshall, a couple so adorkably in love she doesn't know whether to cringe or just grin like a dope at them.
They're all so perfectly high school. Lily's an artist, that's easy to see. Ted's into history, and Marshall—she doesn't quite know about Marshall yet, except for the fact that he's sweet and can eat four corn dogs and half a full-sized bag of potato chips in less than twenty minutes.
When they ask where she's from, she says upstate. It's a lie, but it doesn't seem to matter. They all smile politely and ask her more questions—easier-to-answer questions, like whether she has siblings and if she's taken the SATs yet. Simple stuff. High school stuff.
She tries not to feel giddy.
When Ted asks her to go to the football game with him on Friday night, it's so easy to say yes, she barely has to consider it.
When he buys her a hot chocolate (instant mix in a Styrofoam cup) at the game and shares a blanket with her, it's obvious.
When he kisses her in his car before dropping her off at home, she knows it for sure.
He's the guy.
The guy she's seen in TV shows. Read about in Seventeen.That high school boyfriend. The one you go to prom with and write cutesy messages in the yearbook with and eventually go all the way with for the first time. He's got dark curly hair and nerdy glasses and a plan for his college applications. He's so far removed from the world of pop stardom and tour buses and the spotlight she wants to cry.
So when he asks her to be his girl, she doesn't even have to think.
~x~
When she finds out that the blond coffee thief is named Barney, Robin laughs through all of eighth period. Then she finds out he's Ted's best friend. "That guy? He's… he's kind of a jerk," she says to Lily in the girls' bathroom.
"I know," Lily says. "But you get used to that."
"I wouldn't."
"Trust me." Lily smiles. "You will."
~x~
She tries not to let on that she's never been to a real high school before. Ted laughs at the way she can't quite get the hang of finding her way around the school, or the way she shies away from the yearbook photographers like they're paparazzi, but he's cool with it. Barney, however, razzes her at every turn.
When she seems too excited about a school pep rally one Friday afternoon, Ted squeezes her hand and calls her adorable. Barney feigns retching and asks if anyone has any Pepto. "No one actually enjoys the pep rally, Shazbertzy," he says. "What were you, secretly a cheerleader at your last school? Hot."
"No. We… just never had pep rallies in Canada," she lies. Too late she realizes her mistake.
"Canada?" Ted repeats.
"CANADA?" Barney's eyes widen, the corner of his mouth lifting.
"I meant—my old school."
"Your old school in CANADA?" Barney says with glee.
"I don't want to talk about it." She goes to the girls' bathroom until the bell rings and she knows they're gone.
Later, in Ted's car, she tells him the truth. Part of it. A small part. Almost nothing, really. Just that she's from Vancouver. "I just… I felt trapped there and when my dad moved here, I wanted a new start. And I don't want to be the Canadian girl, or…" Or have anyone think about me enough for it to occur to them to Google me.
"But you lied," Ted says. "I don't know why you would lie." He looks genuinely distraught, and she doesn't know what else to do, so she says she's sorry and kisses him. And pulls him into the backseat and kisses him again. And eventually takes her shirt off, and kisses him some more. Until she's sure that he's not thinking about Canada. Or the truth. Or anything.
The next day she overhears Barney mention the Vancouver thing, and Ted tells him to back off, like it's a sore spot.
But she's okay with that, if it means no more questions.
~x~
In early November, she walks in on Barney making out with a petite brunette in the art supply room. The girl runs out, embarrassed, but Robin and Barney just stare at each other for a long moment. "Really, Barney?" she finally says. "Really?"
"Don't be jealous, Scherbatsky." He buttons the undone button on his shirt.
She can't help but notice it's the first time he's gotten her name right. "Uh, please. You're not my type."
"Oh yeah? What is your type?"
She smiles and crosses her arms. "Oh… Ted Mosby. You know, the All-American boy."
Barney looks confused. "All-American boy? Ted? Do you even know what that phrase means, Canada?"
"Shut up."
He laughs. "You really hate talking about it, don't you."
"I said shut up. Are you done in here? I need to find some… I forget. Art supplies."
He's still smiling at her. Finally he runs his hands through his hair, combing it with his fingers, and slides past her out the door. "Let me know if you need any help figuring things out in here," he adds.
She thinks she really hates him.
~x~
At Thanksgiving, Ted introduces her to his family. His sister Heather latches on to her immediately, and his parents keep filling her plate with more food. She resists the urge to tell them all that Real Thanksgiving is long past, or that last year she spent it with her manager at a mall opening in Ottawa.
It starts to snow after the sun goes down, and she and Ted walk around the block catching snowflakes on their tongues. "I think I might love you," Ted says, taking her hand. "And I've been thinking that for a while now."
It catches her off guard, because this is all so great and fun and simple, and he's not supposed to make it a forever kind of thing—it's a normal-teen-life kind of thing, isn't it?—so she just smiles and says how glad she is to have met him. He bites his lip and hesitates, like he wants to say something else, but stops.
"Give me some more time?" she asks, and he hugs her.
It's the best fake Thanksgiving she's ever had.
~x~
She's perfectly happy ignoring Barney, but he sees her alone at a table in the library after school one day and corners her.
"'Sup, Skerbattaby?"
She rolls her eyes and opens her math book. "What do you want, Barney?"
"I just think it's about time we had the talk."
"The talk?" A librarian shushes them from across the room. "The talk?" Robin repeats in a whisper.
Barney takes off his jacket—she has to admit, the boy is pretty well dressed for a high schooler—and sits beside her. "About Ted."
Something about his voice makes her shift uneasily. He sounds… serious. Sincere. Something about the way he locks eyes with her makes her want to look away, but she doesn't.
"Ted's… my bro. My best friend. I get that you're not my biggest fan, and that's—that's whatever. But…" He looks away now. "But based on what he's told me, I get the feeling you're not as into him as he is into you, and I just gotta say, whatever game you're playing…"
"Game?" she snaps, prompting another shush from across the room.
"Yeah," he says, quiet but with emphasis. "Something about… I don't know. It's like you're playing house with him."
There's no way. There's no way he could know what she's been through, what she wants, how difficult it's been for her to just become an average high school girl after years of—there's no way.
"You don't know anything about me," she finally says, her voice stiff.
He puts a hand over hers then. It's the first time he's ever touched her, and his hand is surprisingly warm. She stares at it as his long fingers curl over hers. "So tell me," he says simply. "I don't like being lied to."
Robin yanks her hand away and stands up. "You're not important enough to me to bother lying to."
He rolls his eyes. "But Ted is?"
"That's not—that's not what I—"
"C'mon, Robin, I'm trying to be a friend here."
"No, you're not. You're trying to catch me in a lie."
He purses his lips for a long moment. "I think only someone who's got something to hide would talk like that."
She's so mad that she wants to shout at him. Tell him that she hasto lie so everything here isn't over and ruined. Instead, she grabs her things and walks out. She walks all the way to Ted's house, and when he asks what's wrong, she says it's nothing. Just a bad day.
The next day she sees Barney sticking his tongue down a freshman girl's throat, and she wants to throw something.
~x~
There's a note in her locker the next day. She grins as she opens it, because it's so Ted to leave her a handwritten note instead of sending her an email or a text. "What's that, a looove note?" Lily teases her, and Robin grins sheepishly.
But it's not from Ted. It's from Barney.
Scherbatsky—I'm sorry. I shouldn't have grilled you like that. Ted really likes you, so I want you guys to be happy. Friends?
-B
"It's from Barney," she murmurs as she reads it again, before she has time to realize that she probably shouldn't tell anyone about this.
Lily frowns. "Why is Barney leaving notes in your locker?"
"It's just—" Robin sighs and shoves it in her bag. "It's just an apology. He was questioning whether I really liked Ted or not. I think he got that it bugged me."
"That's ridiculous!" Lily says as they push into the crowd and head toward class. "Of course you like Ted! …don't you?"
"Yes! Of course! Why wouldn't I like Ted?! Obviously I like Ted!"
"Okay, okay, I got it," Lily says. "Calm down."
I am calm, Robin thinks. She reads the note four more times before the final bell, as if there's something between the lines she might catch. But there's nothing. Just a small pencil smudge over her name, like he'd touched the paper there.
~x~
She and Ted have their first fight in early December. She catches him Googling her name—just a way to pass the time in study hall, he says, but the guilty look on his face tells her it was more than that. "I just don't know anything about who you were before you came here, okay?" he finally admits. "I don't even know what school you went to. C'mon, everyone Googles the people they're dating."
"I don't," she says, on the verge of tears.
He says she's making too much of it. She says maybe if he thinks her feelings are so trivial, they should take a break. He says maybe they should, and then they both get kicked out of study hall for making too much noise.
It's Barney who finds her later. She's sitting on the front steps of the school, chin in her hand, watching the cheerleading squad practice their drills on the lawn.
"I heard what happened," he says.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay." He sits quietly for a moment. "Just tell me what it is."
"What?"
"The big secret. The reason Ted's not allowed to ask you personal questions. Where you were before you came here. Believe me, I've already looked online, and there's nothing on a Robin Scherbatsky."
"There wouldn't be," she says bitterly, thinking for the first time that's she's grateful to her manager for coming up with the stupid stage name. Slowly, carefully, Barney drapes an arm around her. She nearly flinches at first, but lets it happen. "Don't try to get close to me, Barney. It's obnoxious," she says finally.
"Too late," he grins.
They sit there for a long time, long enough that she relaxes a little. He pulls her closer. "Look, I care about you," he finally says, awkward. "You're… cool. You're kind of weird." She half-smiles and wipes at her nose. "You get excited about stupid things," he continues. "And you've got a great—"
"Don'teven say something chauvinistic right now."
"Okay… you've got a great… smile." He rubs her shoulder.
She can't help laughing. "Thanks, Barney."
When he gets up to leave, he turns back to smile at her and suddenly, she almost wants to tell him.
She doesn't, of course.
~x~
It's easy to make up with Ted, because most things are easy with Ted. They're kissing by the lockers when she catches Barney watching them. She breaks away from Ted and sends Barney a look that's supposed to say, "I'm being careful. I care about him, too." But something apparently went wrong in the translation, because Barney just bites his lip and turns, walking away.
She's just grateful he's not grilling her anymore.
Being friends with Barney is better than trying to ignore him all the time, she decides. He's a good guy to have on her side during gym class—apparently years of laser tag have given him perfect dodgeball reflexes. She's no slouch either; she hadn't played PeeWee hockey for nothing, so together they're a killing machine. "Damn, Scherbatsky!" Barney laughs after a particularly ruthless game. "Who knew you had that kind of bloodlust?"
"Please," she grins. "All Canadians have it."
And he's surprisingly smart when it comes to SAT prep. "The guy took it four times," Marshall tells her one day when no one else is around. "Scholarship's his best chance at a good college next year."
"Ha," Robin says flippantly. "I didn't think he cared about much except chasing girls and being annoying."
"Whoa, hey," Marshall says, stopping in the middle of the hall and shaking his head. "You get that he's more than that, right? I mean, deep down."
"Well—yeah. I mean, I guess," Robin admits. "I get that vibe, sometimes."
"What vibe?" Barney's voice interrupts them. "Something kinky?"
She and Marshall look at each other and roll their eyes, but the conversation sticks with her.
~x~
Just before winter break, Lily and Marshall have the idea to do Secret Santa between the five of them. "But we'll know exactly who everyone has," Ted teases. "Don't you think it'll be obvious? Back me up here, Barney."
"Secret Santa is lame," Barney says in monotone, his attention fully focused on his phone.
"I think it sounds fun," Robin says. "I've never done Secret Santa before."
"Shocker," Ted says. "Something Robin's never done before."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," Ted says. "You just… you say that a lot."
"No, I don't," she says, trying to sound calm. "Back me up here, Barney."
"Secret Santa is lame," Barney repeats, still texting.
"Uh, different topic, bro," Ted says. "Who are you texting?
"Jackie Barrett. Her parents have a hot tub on their patio." Barney lets out a dirty chuckle, his eyes never leaving his phone.
"Gross," Robin and Lily say simultaneously. Lily tries to turn the conversation back to Secret Santa, but Robin loses interest, watching Barney. He waves to a blonde girl across the cafeteria, and then a pretty sophomore girl stops at their table to whisper something in his ear that makes him grin and wink at her, in that way that only he can pull off. Then he's texting again, and waving again, and finally Robin breaks.
"Stop it."
"Hmm?" He doesn't even look up.
"Stop being disgusting. Just—just pick a girl, and stick with her. I'm sick of watching you treat women this way." She doesn't even know what's coming out of her mouth. Sure, she's thought these things before, but has it really bothered her this much? Really?
Maybe, a voice says somewhere deep down.
She's still talking, she realizes. Something about chauvinism and players and refusing to stop texting when Lily's explaining Secret Santa. And when she finally stops the word vomit, she looks around the table, and everyone is staring at her. Marshall's mouth is hanging open so wide, she can practically see his tonsils. Ted looks… well, she's not sure what his expression is saying. Lily looks like she's overanalyzing.
Barney looks positively shaken. "The way Itreat…?" He trails off. "This, coming from you? Look at how you treat Ted!"
"Hey," she warns.
"Don't hey me, Canada. You want to talk about treating people well, take a look in the mirror. You've been lying to Ted since Day One."
She feels the hair on the back of her neck prickle. "This? Again? I told you—"
"Yeah, I know what you told me." Barney stands, pushing his chair out from behind him. "It's a load of bullshit."
"Where the hell do you get off?" She stands to meet his eye level. Other students are starting to look now, but it barely registers. "You don't know anything about me!"
"No?" he says, his tone biting. He looks at Ted, Marshall, and Lily, then meets Robin's eyes again and doesn't flinch. "You all want to know the truth? Go look up Robin Sparkles."
She can't breathe for a moment. Barney holds her gaze, just long enough for her to finally remember to take a choked breath of air, and kicks his chair aside and walks out.
Then, vaguely, through the fog, she registers the sound of dozens of students whipping out their phones. To take pictures of the ridiculous scene or to search the name Robin Sparkles, she doesn't know.
All she sees is Ted slowly shaking his head.