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1.
you’re 12 and you meet the both of them for the first time at the battered old synagogue at 25th and 6th. you’re a firecracker, so sure that a single spark will ignite you in a thousand colours. stu is gangly and shy, limbs too long and a heart too big, and if you’re a firecracker, morrow is the one one who designed the whole display, brilliant and electric and the only one with an ounce of self-assuredness between the three of you. you’re an odd trio, the reb would say, and a whole lot of trouble for anyone involved.
2.
you and morrow are a powder keg of chaos at 13, terrorizing the tired grad student leading your hebrew class. stu cowers, a mix of annoyance and anxiety. in the end, she always goes along with it, though, even if it’s accompanied by a disapproving look. the three of you make a contest out of stealing your teacher’s pens, getting more outlandish each time. when you get caught, stu’s mortified, morrow’s defiant, and you’re apathetic. one could argue that’s the perfect snapshot of the three of you, personality frozen in a picture frame. each of their hands warm you up.
3.
you’re 15 and bitter. morrow’s kisses taste like cinnamon and ash. you don’t know how to reconcile these things. back in charleston for the summer, you spend most of it when you’re not working in parking lots sharing cigarettes between you, stu leaning against the wall. your sister won’t even come home anymore, too busy with a life that doesn’t involve you, too busy with a future you’ll never achieve. if you’re still a firecracker, then stu is the fuse, and morrow is the match; some days it feels like if you ignite, it can only end in mutual destruction.
4.
chanukkah the year you turn 18 is spent in the shitty apartment morrow and stu are sharing. soot and cinnamon stain your fingers always, working in the mines makes your skin itch, just like everything else in joliet. stu has an old menorah, the kind you fill with oil, and on the 8th day it shines so bright you can see why you’ve been doing it for thousands of years. you wonder what that’s like, to defy expectations so greatly, to be light and air and hope. morrow’s kisses taste like applesauce and kosher wine these days, bitter and sweet.
5.
you’re 21 and the streets of chicago are burning. the call comes to you in one massive wave, bowing you over and dragging you back with the tide. things are falling into focus in a way they never have before, why you’ve always felt so aimless, like a match that wouldn’t light, a spark on a damp night. you think of morrow when you’re in the thick of flames, the way he burns bright and hot, a brilliant blue into orange. you think of stu when the water flows, cool transience, healing and copious and as necessary as life itself.
6.
the prophecy feels more like a target on your back than anything else, most days. the expectations, the doubt, the words of condemnation are all circles in bright colours that rest upon your skin. still, when the whispers of a return for blaseball start, you find yourself excited, a chance to prove your worth. in the end, the reality of it is like a manufactured dream, picturesque and false, cracks running deep underneath.
you wonder, some days, if it would be better in charleston, with the two of them by your side like you dreamed at 13, but you’re not.
7.
you play the thieves several times. morrow’s effervescent out there, blinding even. stu is just as bright but it’s a quieter hum, steady and strong. you’re still a firecracker, you think, all show and flare, but burnt out in a blink of an eye. that suits you fine, to go out in a masterful bang, bright colours and ever-fading, loud noise and the silence underneath. unassuming in your own way, you fly under the radar for what really matters, you are fire: the steady crack of the ball against the bat, the pounding of feet on field, like a heartbeat.
8.
you eat a peanut and it feels like you’re dying. throat closing up, it’s like choking on smoke or your own blood or the billion expectations piled a mile high. it leaves you breathless, out of shape and winded, and you’re worse off now, because of course you are. a prophesied pitcher only meant to be a disappointment in the end, a candle that fizzled out before it could light. morrow stares at you with pity, you want to punch the stupid look off his face. instead you breathe in the smoke he gives, caustic and bitter all in one.
9.
morrow goes out exactly how they lived; bright and electric, a burning effigy of passion and brilliance. you and stu brush hands at the funeral; pallbearers for a coffin holding only ashes. the dirt on your shovel feels like guilt as it hits the wood; heavy and thick and tinged with regret. the two of you lean against the iron fence later, going through a pack of cigarettes passed between you, not ready to leave, not ready to cry. she looks tired beyond her years even asleep in the passenger seat of declan’s car back to chicago; so do you.
10.
if you knew how painful being torn through space and time was, you never would have played that day. the temporary stasis you’re in is agony, tearing and ripping through you till you’re nothing anymore. it’s rewriting you in lines of code from the ground up, like a phoenix through the ashes, like a star into a galaxy.
when you land, it’s in a world far too different from your own and still the same, and the first thing you do is check for morrow. his kisses are phantom, like nothing but whispers of smoke, like ash on your tongue.
11.
they don’t know you here, that’s the worst part. morrow’s still dead, and it’s still an open sore, raw and inflamed; but stu? stu doesn’t know you at all, couldn’t pick you out of a lineup if she tried. she’s loud here, brash and confident like yours never was. a decade and a half of memories down the drain, of kisses and fights and everything in between, all for the low price of catching a groundout and being torn through space and time. the thought tastes bitter, like the cheap vodka you’d pass between you beneath the stars long ago.
12.
(you’re 12 and apathetic, you’re 13 and timid. you’re 15 and bitter, 18 and caustic, 21; burning alive. you’re a firecracker and you’re an unlit match and you’re a star in a constellation with them on either end. you’re a supernova about to implode into a black hole, and you’re scared in a world where you know no one. your only never-changing constants are gone, and with it, a part of yourself. no match, no fuse; it’s up to you, now, to set yourself alight and burn as bright and long as you can, like the oil in the temple.)