Short Story "Mount St. Helen"

MOUNT ST. HELEN

On July 2, fourteen-year-old Helen Warhaas was pitching the last inning in the last game of the season of the Heart Lake YMCA Junior Girls Softball League. This final game of the league championship was a pure, Grade-A knuckle biter! For most of the game Helen’s team, the Tigers languished two runs behind the undefeated Lady Dragon’s until in the seventh inning, Sharon Good caught the good end of a bad pitch and turned a wicked line drive into a three-run homer. The Tigers were up a point, and two innings away from winning. The idea of winning was a new and strange sensation for Helen to contemplate. For most of her life, she was considered the biggest loser in school.
Helen was a short, stocky, unshaped lump of a girl. She wasn’t always that way. When she was younger, she remembered being the apple of her mother’s eye.
“Oh, my baby is soo smart…!” Her mother would boast to her friends on the phone. “Only, five and reading the n...