Is Late Better than Never?
by Lily Rasputin

Chapter Two

Author’s Note: TW: Suicide

It took me a moment to recover from the shock created by the voicemail bombshell.

I pointed at the phone as I glared at Namira. “What the hell was that all about?” The pause button was pressed on my earlier trepidation about angering a powerful, otherworldly being.

“Nanny? Why am I … I mean, why is Maddie, my family’s new nanny? For that matter, why is Kelly even hiring a nanny in the first place?”

“I suppose she needs the extra assistance with raising the children,” the Djinn said with a smile that I wanted to slap off her beautiful face. “I mean, it can’t be easy raising a fourteen-year-old and a ten-year-old by yourself. As for why you’re the new nanny? Well, now you get to be there to help raise them.” The smarmy grin widened. “Per your request.”

I took two steps toward her, determined that I was going to do something physical to her, consequences be damned. Then, the logical portion of my brain caught up with the emotional portion, and I stopped in my tracks.

“Why is Kelly having to do it alone?”

Namira sighed but didn’t remove the pleased expression from her face. “Because you’re dead.” She held up one hand. “I know all of this is a bit of a shock, Madeline, but try and think back to what was probably an hour ago for you. The storm? The oncoming headlights? Any of that ringing a bell?”

My legs immediately quit working, sending me crashing to the carpeted floor with a thud. I could already feel my heart collapsing in on itself.

“I’m dead?” The words clung to my throat like old moss on a willow tree. “I died in that crash?”

She nodded. “I mean, you had to go somewhere, right? Couldn’t turn you into the new her without getting rid of the old you. If it’s any consolation,though, you didn’t feel any pain. I just yanked that all-important soul out right at the moment of impact.” The Djinn seemed extremely pleased with her soul-yanking skills.

It took me several minutes of sitting there, tears rolling down my cheeks, before I could finally swallow the heavy lump lodged in my esophagus. I kept thinking about how devastated they all must have been. Sheila and Devon, standing next to my grave, crying and calling out for their dad. Kelly, dressed in black with a veil over her face. Probably blaming herself for the fight that sent me out into the rainy night to cool down.

I had promised her that my wanting to explore my femininity didn’t mean that she was losing the person that loved her. It just meant that he was going to become a her.

Now, she was all alone.

“This is all my fault,” I whispered. “If we hadn’t fought, if I hadn’t decided it was time to finally come clean about myself, I wouldn’t have left the house in that storm. I’d still be alive and in their lives.”

“Well, you are alive. And the phone call shows that you’re still going to have a place in their lives.” Namira slid to the edge of the bed, placed her hands in her lap, and peered down at me with a look of barely constrained giddiness. “Plus, so you can get on with your new life and stop beating yourself up about what happened before, this was going to happen regardless.”

I wiped my cheeks with the palms of my hands. “What was? Me dying?”

She nodded. “You made the wish. The bargain was sealed. Like I said, I don’t make the rules. I could finally clear your wish off my list, so … Mikey was going bye-bye. If not a car crash in a downpour, then an embolism while mowing the yard. Or a heart attack while watching TV. Once the soul is removed, fate steps in and does the rest.”

I clenched my jaw. “You were going to kill me just so you could grant my wish? How fucking evil is that?”

She shook her head. “I’ve already explained how the whole thing works. You wished to be a girl when you were nineteen. So, the only way to make that happen was to pull your soul out of your forty-nine year old male body and stick it into the body of a nineteen year-old girl.” One finger twirled around in the air next to her temple. “I didn’t run an IQ test on Maddie beforehand, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t this airheaded.”

Whatever sarcastic comment I was about to make got knocked aside by the formation of a question I really didn’t want to ask. However, since the more I knew, the better off I’d likely be in the end, I knew I had to ask it.

“If you pulled my soul out of my body, my old body, and stuck it in this one,” I tapped my new, more buoyant chest, “what happened to Maddie’s soul?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s in the afterlife.”

“Heaven?”

Namira shrugged. “If that’s where she thought she was going to go. There are no definitive destinations when it comes to an afterlife. If people think they deserve an eternal paradise, then that’s where they go. If they feel they were worthy of damnation, then endless torture is what they get. If they believe they will be reincarnated, then they are. The soul is a pretty powerful thing when it’s freed from that sack of meat you call a body.”

I ignored the metaphysical philosophy in favor of the important part of the answer. Mike was dead, but the soul that had been in his body was now in the body of Maddie. Which meant …

“Did you kill her too?” I asked the Djinn, my narrowing eyes focused on those crimson orbs of hers. “Like you killed me, or whatever? Did you make it so her body would be available for you to use to complete the wish?”

Namira actually had the nerve to look insulted. She shook her head and stood up, towering over me with a scowl. “Most certainly not! We are not allowed to murder humans in the course of granting a wish. For the record, though, I didn’t kill your body. I merely pulled out the soul and let the accident you were already going to have do the job.”

“Sounds a lot like a suspicious circumstance if you ask me. You do the yanking and then nature cleans up the mess.”

“Take it up with the gods if you want. I just work with what I’ve got.”

I nodded, then pushed myself to my feet so that I no longer had to look up at her. Now that I was no longer in shock, or not as much as I had been, I noticed that I was slightly taller than the Djinn. Despite the heeled sandals on her feet.

I glanced back into the mirror, staring at the girl looking back at me. Her cheeks were now splotchy and those green eyes ringed with little red lines. “What happened to her?” I asked as I slowly pulled my gaze back to Namira. “Did you pull out her soul to make room for me?” I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I learned that my wish, cast decades ago, had been responsible for snuffing out Madeline’s life.

Namira shook her head. “No. She died by her own hand.”

Turning, she pointed at the floor next to the nightstand. When I’d jumped out of bed and struck it with my hip, I’d knocked off most of the items that had been on it. Now, looking at where the Djinn was pointing, I could see exactly what those items were.

Prescription medicine bottles. Six of them, in fact. And while I couldn’t be completely sure from my vantage point, it appeared that all of them were empty.

“Suicide?”

Namira nodded with a frown.

“Yes. That’s why there was such a delay in getting you situated. I had to wait for the right person, one that fit all of the necessary parameters to pass on. Well, most of them anyways. The nanny thing was all my doing, though. While it was easy enough to make the other candidates screw up their interviews, planting the memory of a fake applicant into your wife’s mind was a bit harder. Fortunately, by that point, she was at her wit’s end and much more agreeable to hiring you.”

Delay? By that point?

Those two phrases stood out in my mind like giant red flags. I forced myself to turn away from the empty pill bottles to look out the window again. My initial assessment of the foliage outside had been correct. The limbs of the tree outside were full of thick, vibrant green leaves. The sort of leaves that marked late spring. Or early summer.

The night of the fateful storm had been late November.

“How long?” I asked Namira without turning back around. I willed my knees into locking tight and continued to simply stare at the tree limbs waving innocently in the morning breeze. “How long has it been since …?”

“Since you died? Well, if you mean you, as in Mike, it’s been six months, four days, ten hours, and seventeen minutes,” she said. “Give or take. I’m not completely sure what the exact moment your body expired was. If you mean Madeline, she died about six hours ago.”

Six months. My family had been without me for six months. Since I didn’t want to ride that particular train at the moment, I forced myself thoughts toward the other deceased party. Apparently, I’d been sleeping just fine in the body of a young girl who died from a deliberate overdose in the middle of the night.

“Why?” I turned to face the Djinn. “Why did she do it?”

She shrugged. “Tired of living, I suppose. Probably something in her life made it seem like being dead was the better alternative.” She looked at me, arching one perfectly shaped brow. “You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

I felt my cheeks and face ignite with the fires of embarrassment and turned away from her. I honestly couldn’t count the number of times in my life I’d wished to die. But I could count the number of times I’d come close to making it happen.

Five. Five times I’d stood on the precipice of self-termination and stared longingly into the abyss of death. Somehow, I’d always managed to finally find the strength to step away from the edge. To force myself to continue living.

I had no idea how many times Madeline might have stood in that same spot. Once? Three times? Fifty? All I did know was that she finally took that step out into oblivion, into the release she felt she needed. Leaving her body empty and that life, the one she apparently didn’t want, for me.

“Look,” Namira said, drawing my thoughts back to the present. “I understand this is a lot to take in all at once. So, why don’t you just start with enjoying the fact that you’re finally able to be who you wanted to be? Sort of, that is.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ll try to check in and see how you’re doing, but right now, I have someone else waiting for me to fulfill their wish.”

She waggled her fingers at me and sashayed out the door like she was on her way to the spa. Rather than abandoning me to go screw up some other poor chump’s life.

“Hey!” I shouted, marching after her. The bedroom door swung closed on its own behind her, and when I pulled it open a half a second later, she was gone.

I found myself in a living room decorated in a simple style that one might expect from being a college residence. A sofa and matching loveseat sat at perpendicular angles around a square, glass coffee table. The television on the wall was moderately sized and fit the room nicely without dominating the wall space. The prints on the walls were landscapes, mostly beach and ocean scenes. In fact, most of the knick-knacks I could see had a nautical theme to them.

The area behind the sofa consisted of a little alcove featuring a small, octagonal table with four chairs. I could also spot the entrance to what had to be a tiny kitchen.

There was a closed door on the other side of the living room from mine. A polished piece of driftwood hanging on it read, “Beth”, in flowing, bright yellow script. It seemed the unnamed blonde who’d absconded with my sweater did have a name.

However, I saw no trace of Namira or where she might have gone. Which meant any further information about my situation was going to have to come from plain old detective work. Shaking my head, I turned around and went back into the bedroom and closed the door, mentally preparing myself for the arduous task of figuring out who I was now.

Beyond more than a brunette teenager named Madeline who obviously had problems she couldn’t live with.

My first task was picking up the mess on the floor next to the nightstand. As I retrieved the half-dozen yellow bottles and put them back on the table, I read the labels. Diazepam, Xanax, and others I didn’t recognize.

Interestingly, the only one actually prescribed to a “Chambers, Madeline M.” was Xanax.

The rest all had other people’s names on them. Had they been stolen from the medicine cabinets of friends? Or possibly ordered online using fake scripts? Either scenario was likely, but finding out how my body’s former owner acquired the means to end her life wasn’t the task on which I needed to focus.

Once all the bottles were back on the nightstand, I climbed onto the bed and sat in a cross-legged position that was much easier to attain, and more comfortable to be in, than I was used to. Picking up the phone from where Namira tossed it, I used the facial recognition program to unlock it, and went right into the texting app.

The most recent ones had been sent to Beth the Blonde Roommate the previous evening. They started with a lengthy post about how Maddie’s planned evening had ended in a disastrous argument in which she had been called suspicious and untrusting. The twenty or so short messages read like a string of random outbursts of thought.

“She said I was acting too crazy to deal with. Can you believe that???”

“She said I’m not trusting. GMAFB!!!”

“She’s the one who’s always being secretive!!!”

“GMAFB!! One little crying fit and apparently I need to be put in a padded room or something.”

“She fucking broke up with me!! I hate her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I glanced over at the prescription sentries standing in silent formation nearby and frowned. It was a sobering reminder of how the whole depressing story ended.

Apparently the girl described in the messages, whom I was beginning to suspect was the Becki that Beth mentioned, couldn’t handle being around whatever Maddie’s issues were any longer. My body’s former owner had been dumped as unceremoniously as last week’s leftover meatloaf.

From there, the texts to Beth just got more and more distraught. Plenty of variations on “I’m such a mess” and “everyone would be happier if I wasn’t here anymore”.

After 12:30 a.m. or so, the texts became more punctuated with misspellings. By 1:30, there were ten in a row that I eventually deciphered to read, “I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.” The last of these was sent around 2 a.m.

Given what Namira had said about Madeline’s time of death, she probably passed out right after sending it.

I wiped away the tear that had snuck out of my eye and was sliding down my cheek. I felt horrible and part of me wanted to curl back under those blankets and pretend that I was still in that car, waiting for the other vehicle to slam into me. As much as I wanted to be a female throughout my life, I never wanted it to come from the misery and death of someone else.

Someone who really did have their whole life ahead of them. A life that was, apparently and irrevocably, mine now.

I lifted my gaze from the screen documenting the last moments of the life of Madeline M. Chambers and glanced around the room. It was my room now, my life now, for better or worse. This might not have been the way I would have liked the wish I made all those years ago to be fulfilled, but since there was nothing to be done to change things, the only way to truly honor that sacrifice would be to try and be the best version of Maddie I could be.

Starting with learning all I could about what type of girl she was behind all the sadness and despair.

The rumbling of my stomach finally forced me to take a break in my exploration slash discovery slash cram session to venture out of my room to the kitchen and get something to eat. I didn’t know when there’d last been food in my belly but considering the text messages describing how the night before had gone, I was willing to bet it was going on twenty-four hours.

As I sat at the table, munching on a ham, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, I reviewed what I’d learned so far about who I was now. Who Maddie had been.

As Madeline Marie Chambers, I was a sophomore at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Major undeclared. An emailed transcript from the just-ended spring semester pegged me with a 2.4 GPA. Not a great average, but at least it wasn’t a failing one. All of the classes listed were the sort of core subjects all undergrads had to endure.

The only standout had been something called “The Fundamentals of Stage Performance”, which had an A listed as the final grade. The lone high grade in the otherwise mediocre report made me wonder if I was a theater nerd now. Or whatever they’re called these days.

The driver’s license in the wallet revealed that I was now a Gemini (June 19th) and listed a home address in the city but not on campus. When I mapped it, I discovered that it was only two miles or so from where I used to live. The idea that I might have driven past her multiple times, while she waited at the bus stop with the other students, gave me a surreal sense of irony.

Because that would mean that I had probably glanced over her way at least once, and wondered absentmindedly how great it would be to be her.

Also, to my wonder and appreciation, I found a notepad app on the phone that listed all of the passwords to her accounts. Including the one for her bank account, which showed a current balance of almost five thousand dollars. An impressive sum for a teenage college student, were it not for the fact that the address on the license was one of Greensboro’s nicer, more affluent, neighborhoods.

I’d also taken the opportunity to get dressed in something more than an oversized T-shirt and panties. Which led to finding that my inherited form wore a size 34C bra and had two tattoos: a swirling, intricately ornate rose vine pattern in green and red, that started on my side above my right hip and traveled down to the top of my thigh, and a small triquetra in black, positioned above my left breast.

Since I was “meeting” my former wife to finalize the process that would satisfy the remaining stipulations of my wish, I selected a nice pair of khaki shorts, rather than one of the many pairs of jeans that ran the gamut from classy to punk concert. I also put on a nice powder blue, short-sleeved blouse, and a pair of pink and white sneakers.

It had been almost twenty years since I’d had hair long enough to actually style in something other than a side part, so instead of using my limited time to fight with my new curls, I simply gathered them back in a ponytail and secured them in place with a white bow clip. It’d been an even longer period since I’d played with makeup, but I found I could still manage to work my way around a mascara wand, lipstick, and some eyeshadow.

I hoped the finished look seemed more “competent nanny” and less “clueless college student”. Still, some part of my mind whispered that I could probably show up in a toga smelling of beer and wouldn’t get turned down for the job.

Not if Namira had anything to say about it.

While I ate, I scrolled through some of the other text messages, as well as the photo gallery. From my limited review, it seemed that Maddie had seven or eight really close friends, including Beth, and a bunch of casual acquaintances that she either had classes with, or knew from high school.

She also seemed to have a contentious relationship with her parents, particularly her mother. According to some of the more recent messages, they wanted Maddie to spend the summer traveling on vacations with them and not wasting it taking care of a stranger’s ‘snot-nosed kids’. They even tried sweetening the pot by agreeing that her “girlfriend” could come along on some of the trips. Provided the two of them acted like platonic friends and not romantic partners.

“Stuck up and homophobic,” I said with a shake of my head. “Awesome parenting skills there, folks.”

Not that I cared. They might be the parents of this body, but I’d be damned if I was going to let them control my life. I was going to be there for my wife and kids, come hell or high society. Maddie’s parents could take all their passive aggressive attitudes, and their expensive vacations, and shove them right up their asses.

Plus, there was even less chance of taking the girlfriend that had demolished the relationship and sent Maddie into a spiral that led to her downing a ton of medication and slipping out of her mortal coil.

I rinsed the plate and put it in the dishwasher. Along with the coffee cup that Beth apparently left behind in her rush to depart. A glance up at the clock over the stove told me I had a little less than an hour before I needed to meet Kelly. I brushed my teeth, hoping that the pink, completely dry toothbrush was mine, and put on some deodorant.

The girl in the mirror had looked confused and angry earlier, when she’d been confronting the Djinn about her new circumstances. Now, she just looked really nervous. I pushed several attempted smiles onto my face until I found one that felt natural instead of forced. In fact, it actually made me look prettier.

“Okay. Day One as Maddie. You got this.”

I shoved the wallet back into the purse, tossed in the phone, and pulled the strap over my head so that it cut across my torso. A wooden peg board hanging next to the front door sported a single set of keys. When I pulled them off, I noticed that the largest one had the BMW logo embossed on it.

“Figures.”

Jingling the keys in my hand, I pulled open the door and nearly collided with a redheaded young woman standing right on the stoop. A redheaded young woman I recognized from dozens upon dozens of pictures in Maddie’s phone. It was the girl who had broken Maddie’s heart, leading to a downward slide into a fatal overdose.

The girl blocking the doorway let out a squeaky, “Eep!” of surprise and took a step backward. Then she flushed a crimson that nearly matched her long, straight hair and let out a little laugh of embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn’t expect you to open the door before I knocked.”

“You’re Becki,” I said in a breathless whisper that sounded equally surprised. “I mean what … what are you doing here?”

To be honest, I believed the events from the previous evening meant I would be spared having to try to navigate the perils and pitfalls of pretending to remember several months’ worth of dates and conversations. I already have enough on my plate without also trying to keep up with a romantic relationship I knew absolutely nothing about.

The other girl’s blush deepened, and she drew in a breath and let it out with a soft sigh, nodding her head as if agreeing that her presence wasn’t anticipated. From the bloodshot streaks around her light brown eyes and the still puffy nature of the soft flesh beneath them, it was abundantly clear she’d been crying recently.

Her gaze held my own for a second or two before moving up to look past my shoulder into the apartment.

“I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now,” she said in a quiet, hopeful voice. “But can we talk about last night? Please?”