My Family's Keeper

My Name is Melissa Destra and this is the story about how I became My Family's Keeper...

Knowing that my family was broken made it my perfect family. My mom and dad have been gone since March, and I've lived this far without them. My grandparents, Kathy Gail and Danny, took me, my twin brother Jeremy and my little sister Lucy in the day they heard about my parents. I used to live in Phoenix with my parents in a four room house. I wasn't home schooled then. I now live in a two story cabin in Payson, Arizona. I like to think of the cabin as home. It has eight bedrooms and a guest house above the garage. Each room has a fireplace and bathroom. The outside was more extravagant than the inside. There was a huge veranda in the front yard, and a small pathway with bushes and flowers that lead you to the front door. The big oak tree in the front yard has a well used treehouse in it with a two person swing hanging from a low branch. The backyard explained why my grandpa wanted the cabin here. My grandpa was in the construction business so we rarely ever saw him until after dinner. The view showed every small detail you could think of, the mountains looked even more colossal from up where I was. The sky was a deep blue that made me want to jump into the big blue pool I thought it was. And the lake, which was down the hill, looked tiny, although I knew better.

After being in Payson for two months I still wasn't used to the whole idea of being home schooled, even after starting two months ago. The only thing that made it easier was my friend Catarina Smith, or Cat for short and my Border Collie Banditt. Cat was over six feet tall with black hair and blue eyes. Cat was being homeschooled by my grandma before we moved here. She and I were total opposites. I for example was only 5 feet tall and weighed 107 pounds. My hair was long, straight, and sandy brown, and I had blue eyes.

I'm always told that I look like my father. When people told me that when he was alive I felt proud. He was my world. Now when people tell me that I almost cry. But if I cry it will show I'm weak and worthless. My dad was in the Marines. He was based in Barstow, California. It was the closest base to where we lived. If he were alive now he would be reading in some far corner off in his book never wanting to leave. But he loved us. He and my mother meet in high school. They were the high schools power couple. They were meant for each other. Almost right after high school they got married and had Jeremy and me. They had Lucy thirteen years after that.

After listening to my grandma speak for almost seven hours; I was glad she was done. Mason Deand was another one of my grandmas students, but he didn't show up today. Jeremy went right up to his room saying " See you later losers". It was Friday night when Cat and I went to our usual spot in the kitchen to do homework. Which was the farthest spot away from the T.V. My grandma always watched the news when she was cooking, and she had the need to have the volume all the way up.

" Grandma, can you please turn that down" I said pleadingly.

Grandma remarked " Sorry Melissa. I need noise to make dinner, and the noise you two make, makes me go insane so the T.V. stays the way it is".

" Fine. What do you think made Mason not come today?"

" Maybe he's sick?" replied Grandma.

" No. He would come so he could make everyone else sick too". After I said that Cat started laughing and said " That is so true!!!".

After she said that the news came on interrupting our conversation.