It's after midnight. Blue, having made a trip to the bathroom and taken a drink, is at this moment climbing back into bed. He is sleepy now, really too tired to read any more. So why does he reach for the book? What am I doing? he says to himself. Why don't I switch off the light?

Oh, no, his lips finally mutter the words. Is it time for that game again? Am I going to close my eyes when I choose, or am I merely a part of some plan? Am I not the captain of my ship, am I not completely in control? So here we go testing, just one more time. I'll count to five and put the book down, snap off the light, and close my eyes. (Or will I?) One, two, three---

Blue pause for a moment and drew in a quick, shallow breath before mouthing the final numbers---four, five! Blue did not shut off his light. Instead, he found himself picking up the book he had been reading moments before, a well-worn volume called A COMPLETE TRAVEL GUIDE TO ROME. Ordinarily, Blue would not have chose to read a travel book about Rome at this stage in his life. He was doing so only because of a private vow he had made three years before, in the wake of his father's death. The idea had come to him quite suddenly one evening as he was sitting in his father's favorite chair. There, on the left, was his dad's bookcase, ignored and untouched since the day of his death. Blue walked over to it and ran the back of his hand across the rows, lightly grazing every volume. What better way to honor his father that to read his favorite books?

Blue was particularly pleased that his new girlfriend, Omaha Nebraska Brown, thought this idea was one of the loveliest tributes she had ever heard. (But is it completely accurate for Blue to think of Omaha as his new girlfriend? For one thing, the word "new" implies that there was an old girlfriend, which is not true. Omaha is the first. And what about the word "girlfriend" itself? Although he had been attracted to her from the very first moment he saw her in English class at the beginning of the term last September, they hadn't begun to really get to know each other on a more meaningful level until a little over a month ago, on the eleventh day of January---Blue's sixteenth birthday to be exact---the day he changed his name from David Schumacher to Blue Avenger and found the courage to blurt out that he loved her. And although he's now sure that the feeling is mutual, there has yet been no firm commitment, no formal declaration that they are, indeed, a couple. Blue is planning to do something about this situation very soon.)

After he finishes A COMPLETE TRAVEL GUIDE TO ROME, Blue will have read 88 out of the 115 books on his father's shelves, leaving only 27 more to go before his vow is fulfilled. The final book in the collection (located on the right-hand corner of the bottom shelf) is THE COMPLETE WORDKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Blue has already thumbed through its 1,337 pages with feelings of trepidation and misgivings, but a bargain is a bargain, if only with oneself, and he is committed to completing the task he had set for himself no matter how painful, and regardless of his suspicion that perhaps his father didn't make it all the way through the COMPLETE WORKS himself.

But now Blue has found the place where he had left off in the travel book. He notices the photo of the statue on page 23, and because of a recent conversation with Omaha, he immediately recognizes the name of Giordano Bruno. With growing interest he reads the text:

In the center of the Campo dei Fiori (meaning "field of flowers") there stands a haunting, brooding statue of Giordano Bruno, sixteenth-century philosopher and heretic, who was burned at the stake on this very spot by the Inquisition on 17 February 1600 because he refused to recant his belief that the sun is the center of our planetary system and that the universe is infinite. Credited with inspiring the European liberal movements of the nineteenth century, particularly the Italian movement for national political unity, Bruno is also regarded by many as a martyr for the cause of intellectual freedom. The faithful still gather at the foot of his statue on the seventeenth of February each year to solemnly commemorate the date of his death. Blue suddenly bolts upright and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. What did that say? He ducks his head closer to the page and quickly rereads the final sentence. The faithful still gather at the foot of his statue on the seventeenth of February each year to solemnly commemorate the date of death.

Holy Moses! he breathes, using on of Omaha's favorite expressions. That's it! That explains why Omaha's father---the man who walked out on Omaha and her mother five years ago, a man obsessed with the life and times of Giordano Bruno---travels to Italy each year! He wants to be among the faithful commemorating the date of Bruno's death! And if Omaha really wants to see Mr. Johnny Brown again after all these years, all she as to do is show up at the Campo dei Fiori in Rome on the seventeenth of February and pick him out of the crowd. Amazing. Simply amazing. Should I call her now and tell her this wonderful news? No, a telephone call this late at night would surely upset her mother. But just think of it! The reuniting of a father and daughter, hinging merely on my reluctance to switch off my light! (But who can say how many other amazing incidents throughout the years were set in motion because of a reluctance to extinguish a light! Take, for instance, that much publicized event in 1897, when a little girl named Virginia O'Hanlon didn't blow out her candle, but instead wrote a letter to the editor of a New York newspaper called the Sun and asked if there really was a Santa Claus. The answer was supplied by Mr. Francis Church in an editorial which appeared on 21 September 1897. "Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Clause," he wrote in this amazing document, which also included another incredible statement: "Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!" The immediate and lasting influence of that one editorial may help explain the climate of daffiness and gullibility that pervades the American landscape even to this day. Just to set the record straight, it must be stated bluntly: Sorry, Virginia. Listen carefully. There is no Santa Claus.)

Excerpted from THE BLUE AVENGER CRACKS THE CODE (c) Copyright 2000 by Norma Howe. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, Henry Holt. All rights reserved.