13 Loops and Whorls

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Loops and Whorls Procedure (noun). The plan for how to conduct an experiment or demonstration. Think of it like a recipe for baking cupcakes. If you fail to follow a step (like adding the sugar), it won't turn out very well. "LIAM, DO YOU WANT TO PLAY detective?" My brother and I munched on granola bars at the kitchen table after school. "Can I be a superhero and a detective?" he asked, popping the last bite of bar into his mouth. "Sure, why not—you can be a detective- superhero." "Yes!" He zipped out of the kitchen. Five minutes later, he reappeared in his Batman pajama top with the cape attached. "You look ready!" I exclaimed. I showed him the fingerprint I had collected from my cubby. Then I explained how we were looking for a culprit based on a match. But that we had to identify my own print first to make sure the ones I collected weren't mine.

"So, the first thing I'm going to do is get my prints." I pushed my thumb down into a pad of blue ink and then pressed it onto a white piece of paper. Then I did the same thing with the rest of my fingers. "Tada! Those are all my fingerprints. And it's the first step in our procedure." Then I wrote my name in big block letters under the print. "I want to do it too." Liam rolled his thumb and his other fingers into the inkpad almost at once. "Tada!" he shouted. Grabbing a red crayon, he wrote his name in huge letters so that there wasn't room for the M in Liam. Flipping his paper over, he wrote a giant M on the other side. I pointed to our prints. "See how they're different? See the pattern of the loops and whorls?" He studied his thumbprint. "It looks like a little hill." Then he examined mine. "Your center swirl is crooked. I want mine to be crooked too." "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you. That's the thing about fingerprints. Every single person has a different one. Even twins." "Hey, that's like snowflakes. Ms. Chen taught us about that. Each one is unique." Ms. Chen is Liam's kindergarten teacher. She has a special handshake for each of her students. And Liam thinks she's the coolest.

"Your fingerprint patterns are formed before you were even born," I explained. "When I was in Mommy's tummy?" "Yup. Basically, we leave behind fingerprints all the time. On doorknobs, glasses, tables. But we can't always see them with the naked eye." He pointed to his eyes. "Unless you got x-ray vision. Like me—superhero detective boy." "True," I said. "Okay, now is the moment of truth. We're going to see if there's a match. Or whether someone else has had their hands in my cubby. It's showtime!" If Elijah were here, he'd do a drumroll. My heart fluttered in anticipation. I compared the prints to mine. Also to Liam's, because why not. Nothing matched up. They were completely different prints. All three of them were. Two looked like maybe pointer fingers and one was definitely a thumb. "It's confirmed!" There was someone sabotaging me. Now there was just one problem. I didn't know how to figure out who it could be.