Robin Cross

Robin is a goalkeeper who starts her freshman year at Palmetto State when the cousins are starting their fifth year and Neil is a fourth-year senior. The Foxes already have a second goalkeeper, of course, but with Andrew on his last season it’s time to secure and train a replacement for him.

## Childhood

When Robin was five, she was taken from a playground in Newark while her mother was distracted on a phone call. (It was a heated argument about a portfolio and her mother turned away to try and hide her obvious outrage from her daughter) Robin’s body was never found because her new “father” Steven had no intentions of killing her. She spent most of her childhood locked in a room with boarded-up windows. She was only let out of her room for dinner, and her Exy-obsessed captor would always put a game on while they ate. In this way Exy became associated with freedom to a girl who’d forgotten what freedom really was.

When Robin was eleven, Steven used her as bait to secure a new, younger child. Steven and the child got away, but Robin did not. She was caught by a good Samaritan when she tried to run.

## Back With Her Family

Robin was reunited with her real family and subjected to a lot of unsuccessful therapy. For months she panicked any time her mother tried to coax her out of the house, so returning to school was out of the question. After struggling with the fear of letting strangers near her daughter, her mother finally recruited an older woman from church to home-school Robin.

It was this teacher who discovered Robin’s notebooks: cover to cover drawings of Exy racquets and mascots painstakingly recreated from memory. Robin drew them when she was afraid, when she was on the verge of having panic attacks, when this world was too big with too many people in it and she missed her tiny prison and Steven’s questionable protection.

The teacher’s son was the coach at the local high school, so she’d learned all she could about Exy to support his passion. When all of Robin’s schoolwork was done for the day the two of them would curl up on the couch and watch a game. Four months later the teacher talked Robin into leaving the house to watch one of the school’s matches. Robin tried turning back twice on the way there, but stuck it out and was rewarded by the unparalleled excitement of a live game.

## Playing Exy

Robin's teacher suggested she start playing Exy and Robin knew if she played she’d want to be a goalkeeper: with a wall at her back, enough armor to protect her from the world, and breathing room between her and the rest of the players on the court.

The teacher spoke to Robin’s parents about it, then spoke to her church group, and together they raised enough money to buy Robin a goalkeeper’s racquet. Robin started carrying it everywhere with her, and so long as she had it she could start leaving the house. She followed her father on walks and her mother to the grocery store and her teacher to games. Her rewards for these successes were books on how to play Exy, and the teacher’s son started coming over in the evenings to coach her. She still didn’t want to go for runs by herself, though, so her father put a treadmill in the basement next to his free weights.

When Robin asked to enroll at the local high school, her parents cried and cried, because their baby girl might be okay after all. Robin passed tryouts for the Exy team and became its substitute goalkeeper. Her father started working from home so he could take her to and from school, and to and from practices, and to and from games after that, because her parents feared what could happen at a bus stop, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make if his daughter could start having a life again.

## How Andrew Found Robin

At the same time Robin took this tremendous step toward healing, Andrew started at Palmetto State as a freshman and began seeing Betsy Dobson on a weekly basis. Betsy’s mother was from Newark, and Robin was in the local news. Betsy vaguely remembered when Robin went missing and better remembered hearing she’d been found; hearing she was starting public school because of Exy was a story she wanted to share with Andrew. She talked about recovering from tragedy, sports as a means of rehabilitation, and the perseverance of the human spirit. Andrew—being Andrew—was an absolute manic asshole about the entire thing and derailed the conversation as quickly as he could.

But Andrew didn’t forget, because Andrew doesn’t forget.

Robin should have just been a name, a means of prying more out of Andrew than he was willing to give Betsy, but Andrew remembered her because Robin’s “father” shared the same name as one of his foster fathers. They weren’t the same person, but the association stuck, as did the knowledge that this man had gotten away. He’d kept and abused Robin for six years, then successfully sacrificed her in favor of getting his hands on a younger child. As far as Andrew was concerned, the recovery Betsy spoke of was skin-deep self-delusion.

Toward the end of Andrew’s junior year, Robin’s replacement is found dead in a river, and a third girl is reported missing. February of Andrew’s senior year, the police finally get a lead on Steven, and Steven makes the mistake of heading for the Canadian border. He is apprehended by the border patrol and his newest daughter is returned home to a grateful family. It makes the news, but even if the Foxes see the clips it means nothing to them—they have nothing to associate the man with and they are fighting their way through championships. Andrew, as the only Fox not wearing Exy blinders, definitely notices the report.

Andrew breaks into Wymack’s apartment the following night and leaves Robin’s name on Wymack’s desk, a handwritten two-word note held in place by a bottle of Walker Blue. Wymack looks into her in the morning. He finds the news first and her Exy stats second. Wymack is sorry for what she’s been through but uninspired by her performance as a goalkeeper. He calls Andrew anyway and asks if he is wasting his breath asking "why her." Andrew says Wymack has gotten into the habit of recruiting boring people these last few years and that this one, at least, might be interesting for a while. It is a sorry excuse, and the vaguest explanation in the entire world, but Andrew making an effort is reason enough for Wymack to abandon every other potential goalie he is watching. He calls Robin’s coach and sets up a meet-and-greet.

It takes Robin a month to decide, because as much as she wants this chance, the thought of going so far from home is terrifying. In the end she signs the contract, though, and she moves into Fox Tower in June.

## The Foxes

It is every bit as awful as she expected. The Foxes are a raucous and aggressive bunch, she has roommates for the first time in her life, the university is too big, and she is hours from home. She reacts by retreating, and that is the worst thing she can do. She is an easy target for the Foxes’ frustrations, especially after they see her performance the first time she’s in goal. Andrew watches it from a distance for a couple weeks, waiting to see if she’ll break and ignoring the pointed looks Wymack sends him from time to time. Neil steps in where Andrew won’t, but he can’t be there to protect her all the time.

The first time Andrew and Robin are alone, Andrew says "I assume you'll fight back eventually," and Robin answers that she doesn’t know how to fight. Later that night he takes her up to the roof of Fox Tower, leads her all the way to the edge, and tells her he will push her off if she doesn’t hit him. He nearly has to make good on that threat before she panics enough to swing at him. Andrew tugs her back to safety, says her form is lousy, and leaves her there without any explanation whatsoever.

The next Friday he takes her to Columbia. He skips the drugs and leaves it up to her to decide if she wants to take any drinks off the tray (she doesn’t). After Nicky and Aaron disappear to the dance floor and Neil takes the hint to go talk to Roland for a while, Andrew and Robin have a long and awful conversation. Andrew takes it where Robin doesn’t want it to go—to the girl she helped Steven capture, who lived for years in that tiny room before he replaced her and dumped her body in a river. And then Andrew tells her about the six children Cass took in after he went away, six foster children where there should have been zero.

(Andrew doesn’t feel guilty over what happened to those six—the way he sees it, they were hurt because of Luther’s betrayal, not because he failed to speak out against Drake years ago. Luther promised he’d talk to Cass and convince her not to foster anyone else. Andrew drives this point home to Robin because it is something Robin never could face, an ugly truth she couldn’t confront because she couldn’t forgive herself. She handed someone’s baby girl to Steven knowing what would happen to her; she is responsible for that girl’s death by proxy. Andrew isn’t the first person to address that guilt with Robin, but he is the first one she listens to. Andrew understands the difference between fault and blame, and it is a distinction Robin desperately needs if she is to ever truly move forward.)

Saturday morning Robin moves in with the cousins, who’ve gone back to rooming together after Matt and Kevin’s graduation the previous spring. There aren’t five beds in the room, but Andrew relinquishes his loft to her and shares with Neil. Aaron and Nicky are a little confused by this abrupt intrusion into a family that hasn’t grown since Neil’s arrival, but they accept her on Andrew’s say-so and make room for her in their lives.

On Monday Robin has a new seat in the locker room: the third cushion on the couch Neil and Andrew share. Andrew makes it inescapably clear that he will kill the Foxes if they lay another hand on her. The Foxes still aren’t particularly nice to her, but they scale the bullying back. Andrew’s lot takes on the task of coaching Robin after hours, and Andrew teaches Robin how to use Renee’s knives. He leaves the knives with her when he graduates, just as Nicky leaves her a key to the house in Columbia. He doesn’t need them anymore.

Her importance to Andrew is what makes Neil look at her as more than just another struggling Fox, and having her around all the time makes it hard to not grow protective and then fond of her. Aaron introduces Robin to Katelyn, who promptly sets out to make Robin her newest best friend. Katelyn’s enthusiastic approval is enough that even Aaron manages to be kind to Robin. Robin flourishes under their guidance, and by the time the cousins graduate she’s doing better than ever.

The following year Neil and Robin are the only ones left. Neil’s never been at PSU without Andrew, and the loss of the last of his original team leaves him adrift. Robin didn’t know the cousins as long as he did, but by now she’s used to having a support network. They grow closer out of necessity, and the bond that comes of it is unbreakable. They go everywhere and do everything together. Wymack claims a mouthy brat like Neil is a worse influence on Robin than Andrew ever was, but he gets used to seeing them connected at the hip.

Andrew’s group put Robin back together as a person and taught her that it’s okay to fight back against life and the world, and their tutelage and a year at PSU made Robin a better athlete. But it is Neil in their absence who gets Robin to the next level with Exy, because Robin can’t spend every waking moment with him and his obsession and not rise to the challenge. By the end of her sophomore year she’s unquestionably Class I material. Wymack makes her vice-captain her junior year, and gives her his team her fourth and fifth years.