Chapter 2 – Lavender Glitter
The next day at school, Hotaru was still feeling nervous. The fact that her father had yelled at the principal made her feel even more nervous. She knew that everyone on the staff would be acting strange, considering as her father had yelled at their leader, the person of highest ranking and respect at the school. And her instincts did not fail her. She knew as soon as she walked into her first class that Ms. Lai felt uncomfortable around her. With flushed cheeks and what appeared somewhat like a cringe, Ms. Lai asked Hotaru in a timid voice if she had finished her paper on what made her special. When Hotaru shook her head, Ms. Lai told her in that same timid voice that it was fine as long as she turned it in by Monday.
Sitting down at her desk, Hotaru noticed the other kids were giving her funny looks. Kitana, one of her good friends, leaned in and asked, "What's going on?" Hotaru shrugged. She knew it wasn't convincing but that it would keep Kitana quiet long enough for Hotaru to get through math and race to her next class before anyone else could question her. As it turned out, no one ever did bother her again with questions the rest of the day. Hotaru arrived home with a sigh of relief as she headed up to her room.
It had been an awful day. She was ashamed of her father and, for no reason at all, ashamed of herself. But during the bus ride home, she had concocted a plan. This plan would make her even more ashamed of herself when it was through, but she had to do it…
After she dropped her backpack on her bed and ate a quick snack, Hotaru headed down to the basement of the house. She had been afraid of the damp, dark basement when she was younger, and had found it rather boring when she grew older. It was just storage space for a bunch of boxes and old furniture that hadn't been dusted in years, as well as a neighborhood of spider webs. But today, the basement was anything but boring. Contained in the boxes were memories...pictures, letters, antiques, old holiday decorations, and countless other things. Hotaru hoped to find something useful in one of them. And so she began to dig through each and every one.
The first box contained a bunch of photographs. She looked closely at every photograph. A few of herself when she was younger she didn't remember at all. She assumed that they had been long ago and that she had merely forgotten when and where they had been taken. She also glanced at a few pictures of her dad when he was younger. He was rather old now, old enough to have a grown child. And yet Hotaru was his only child, and he spoiled her rotten. Some of the pictures of her and her dad made her grin from ear to ear.
The second, third, fourth, and seventh boxes were merely fancy vases, rusty silverware, heavy blankets, and other random items that did not interest her in the slightest. The fifth and sixth boxes contained old bottles of liquid that had molded over time and seeped through the bottles so that they made the inside of the box sticky and foul-smelling.
After searching through dozens of other boxes, Hotaru began to feel defeated. There were no hints or clues to be found. She began to wonder if maybe her dad was right, that the whole "Hotaru Tomoe" thing was just a silly prank.
Later that night, after straightening up the boxes so that they looked untouched, Hotaru sat down to dinner with her dad. For the first time, Hotaru was content to listen to her dad talk about his job for seemingly endless minutes. She didn't want to talk about her day at school, and she really didn't want to talk about what she did after school. She knew that some of those items contained in the boxes were very special to her dad, and that he would be concerned if he thought she had been going through the boxes and tossing the items aside. She also figured that he would be upset if he knew that she thought he was hiding something. Once or twice Professor Tomoe asked Hotaru a question about school, but she managed to get him off subject before he asked about the principal or if she had interacted much with the other kids. At one point she wondered if she was able to get him off subject too easily…like he was asking about school though he really didn't want to know. But she decided to just be grateful that he was doing all the talking and not her.
At midnight, Hotaru woke from a deep sleep. She had a strange feeling inside…but she couldn't figure out why. She tried to fall back to sleep but she felt wide awake. After sitting in bed for a while, she went downstairs to the kitchen, assuming the strange feeling was from hunger. She had hardly eaten at dinner for obvious reasons. But nothing seemed to taste good when she swallowed it, not even her favorite candy bar. As she sat, confused and still feeling strange inside, Hotaru suddenly had an overwhelming urge to look through the piles of junk in her dad's closet. They had never seemed that interesting before, and yet, quietly, she made her way to her dad's bedroom. Peeking in, she saw that he was not in bed. After checking his study to find him sleeping at his desk, Hotaru began to plow through the junk in his closet as though there was gold hidden somewhere in it. She found a bunch of neat stuff, but one item intrigued her more than the others. Whenever she picked it up, the strange feeling inside of her was replaced with a refreshing feeling as though she had just been swimming in cool water, or napped beneath the warm sun. She tried to put it down, but she found herself picking it up again. She stared at it a moment before closing her eyes…images flashed through her mind…all of the sudden, three words popped into her head. "Saturn Planet Power!" she called out before she could stop herself.
Like magic, Hotaru was instantly engulfed in swirling lights. She wouldn't have known what was happening if she had been able to focus, but she was in almost a dream state. When she finally came to her senses, she felt…different. Not different on the inside, as she had been feeling before, but on the outside. She slowly walked over to her dad's dresser mirror and looked in. Immediately she gasped. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.
She wore a white outfit that resembled a sailor's, as it had a purple collar with a large red bow attached to it. Her skirt was the same color of purple as the collar, with another red bow in the back. Her hands were covered with two long, white gloves and her feet were covered with fancy purple boots that laced up in the front. A choker adorned her neck and a tiara adorned her forehead. Earrings shaped like the planet Saturn were pierced through her ears. Wondering how she could not have felt it before, Hotaru noticed that a jeweled scythe was also clasped in her left hand. It was all so amazing and unbelievable. Why did she look this way? How did she become to look this way? What had happened!
Sighing with confusion, Hotaru dropped her gaze to the floor. She was thinking a million thoughts at once and none of them made sense. Actually, she realized, nothing seemed to make sense anymore. But looking back in the mirror, she stopped worrying for a moment and simply stared in awe. Moonlight was shining through the window above her father's bed. And for a moment, she felt as though nothing could hurt or confuse her. She was simply a graceful lavender figure, glittering and shimmering in the moonlight.