You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs

the pretty blue scarf around her neck—it was the only thing she wore that was fresh, new—and used it to dust the bench of snowflakes, my side first. Then she dusted her side and we sat.
    “Promise me that you will—every once in a while—watch a movie that was made before you were born. And also that you’ll see a play now and then.
Promise me,
” she said.
    I told her I would.
    She smiled, pleased. And then she said, “I would ask you to promise me something else but I know you can’t.”
    I didn’t say anything. Maybe because she had already known me for four hours but I didn’t know her at all; something felt almost spooky.
    She was watching me.
    “I would ask you to promise me that you will stop this crazy business about wanting to be
‘a bum,’
as you so elegantly put it. It is most certainly not, as you say,
‘your destiny.’
    “And I would ask you to stop drinking because
I know.
I know what alcohol does to a person. Especially an ambitious young person with so many dreams and more talent than she even knows what to do with.” She smiled and hugged herself. “Oh, when you are young and you have talent and you know,
you know
in your bones that you are going to go so high and so far.”
    Then she let go of herself. “Those are the ones booze seems to hunger for the most. And once you are with the drink,
oh,
how it strip-mines the soul. In the end you wind up with nothing at all. And it’s like that for everybody. It doesn’t matter how rich you are or how poor or how white or how yellow or”—and here she looked down at the sidewalk—“how much of whatever it is you have inside you. It just does not matter. The drink is stronger. It will always win and you won’t even know it’s trying to until it has.”
    She paused and closed her eyes, lifted her face to the sky. Almost like she was facing the sun, wanting it to give her that good, clean feeling you get from it. But there was only a street lamp and falling snow. And I watched as flakes smacked her face and melted instantly. And then I realized, it must be the feeling of the snow hitting her face and instantly melting that she enjoyed.
    She looked at me then, her face moist. Snowflakes had gathered in her eyelashes and made it appear as though she had been crying. And then I wondered,
has she
?
    As much as I wanted to think of her as a homeless, rambling drunk, I could not. Because everything she said almost had the tone of a bell, a certain purity. I thought, then, of the phrase,
It rings true.
And I realized, this is where it comes from; somebody telling you
what is,
and you hear the bell in their voice and know they’re right.
    I almost couldn’t tell if she was giving me advice or telling me my fortune, like they were all mixed up.
    She continued, “And if I could, I would ask that you write. You kept saying last night that you had
‘whole worlds’
inside of you that you needed to get out. Well, get them out, my dear. Focus on this. On something positive for yourself. And for others. I would ask you to set those worlds free.”
    I caught myself looking at her clothing. And I realized immediately why I was doing it. I was looking for a way to discount everything she was telling me. Because there was something
too
true in her words. It was frightening in a way and I wasn’t sure why.
    Or, maybe she really was just a rambling drunk.
    Suddenly, she clapped her hands. “Okay, enough heavy. It’s snowing. It’s Christmas. We both have some fine company. How about a song? Shall I sing you something? It’ll be my Christmas present to you.”
    We were sitting side by side on the bench, and she took both of my hands in hers and placed the entire pile of our hands on her lap. She looked at me with such intensity in those eyes, with
dare.
    I smiled at her. “Yes, please do sing something.”
    I hoped I wouldn’t laugh during her rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or whatever it was she had in mind.
    God, what if