You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (22 page)

Most of the ornaments, though, were new; I hadn’t seen them before.

“When did you do this?” I asked him.

“Tonight.”

“But why?”

He was silent for a moment.

Then he said, “I wanted you to have your Christmas tree.”

All I could do was stand there and watch it.

Dennis watched it, too.

A couple of times, he turned to look at me and he was smiling.

And I wasn’t smiling.

But then I did, a little.

And he was holding my hand and I was holding his back.

We stayed that way for a little while.

Then without us even knowing it, midnight arrived. And it became Christmas.

“I’m very lucky,” I whispered, so that my voice wouldn’t crack.

He squeezed my hand.

“I always have been, you know.”

“I know,” he said.

He bent over and picked up the extension cord near his feet. The lights were plugged into the end of it.

I assumed.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, smiling at me.

He pulled the plugs apart.

And instantly, the house fell absolutely, perfectly, blessedly
silent.

Also by Augusten Burroughs

A Wolf at the Table

Possible Side Effects

Magical Thinking

Dry: A Memoir

Running with Scissors

Sellevision

YOU BETTER NOT CRY
. Copyright © 2009 by Island Road, LLC.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burroughs, Augusten.

You better not cry : stories for Christmas / Augusten

Burroughs.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

eISBN: 978-1-429-94375-8

Date of eBook conversion: 07/16/2010

1. Burroughs, Augusten. 2. Novelists, American—

20th century—Biography. I. Title.

PS3552.U745Z93 2009

813'.6—dc22

[B]

2009017121

First Edition: November 2009