This Place Is Still Beautiful by XiXi Tian

Author:XiXi Tian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Margaret

“Cheers,” Rajiv says, clinking his milkshake against my root beer. “I’m impressed you found the video.”

“Thank you. Your auntie gave me the idea, when she mentioned the security cameras at the strip mall.” I take a sip of my drink, tasting of comfort and childhood. We’re at the local Steak ’n Shake, where everyone used to go after football games. Something about it just feels like home. The part of it I miss, anyway. Rajiv convinced me to go for a quick celebration after work when I told him I turned the video footage over to the police, who reopened the case.

“Well, I’ll have to tell her that. What did they look like?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know what I expected. They look young. High schoolers, probably.”

“Did you show Annalie?”

“Yes. She didn’t recognize them. You can’t see their faces.” I remember her pinched, pale expression as she watched the video. I pressed her on it, insisted that she had to at least have a guess. She snapped that she didn’t want to guess and was tired of constantly being reminded of something that was over. She went straight to bed after without another word.

“Well, chin up. It’s great progress. And besides, they were wearing jerseys, right? Idiots. They must be school jerseys from around here.”

I shrug. “I don’t recognize them. Maybe they bought them somewhere. I spent three hours googling different retail stores for those designs, and there are a ton of custom ones, and the colors aren’t that unique.”

“They’ll find the guys.” The conviction behind his eyes is intense. I can’t remember the last time somebody has looked at me the way he has. None of the guys I went on various dates with at NYU, each of them as forgettable as one of a thousand leaves on the same oak tree. “And then after, we’ll celebrate again.”

We sit silently, drinking our beverages. For all the ease we have around each other at work, it still feels like uncharted territory to go somewhere voluntary, just to be together.

“You know that for the longest time, I couldn’t bear to come here.” Rajiv says quietly.

“What? Steak ’n Shake?”

He nods.

“Why?”

He looks at me with an expression of surprise intermingled with frustration. “You don’t remember.”

He was always more sentimental than me.

“We were going to come here after prom. You wanted to do that, remember? Come here in your prom dress.” He grimaces.

“Oh, right,” I say, almost inaudibly. Somehow, in all the things that happened that night, this particular detail didn’t stick in my mind, because to me, it seemed insignificant in the enormity of the wreckage. If I had remembered, I never would’ve agreed to come here. “Is this why you brought me here? So we could talk about it?”

“No. I mean, maybe some small part of me did.” He exhales and gives a wry half smile that’s more of a frown. “We never did talk about it.”

Yes, we never did talk about it. After that day, we never talked again until this summer.

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