Gravity by M. Leighton Page A

doubted they had any idea they were preparing to devour each other.  But they were.  I knew it. I could see it.  And I had to stop it.
    “You two just about finished?  I was hoping Lacey could help me in the kitchen,” I confessed breathlessly, already gasping for air in the face of their power and what it was doing to me.  I addressed Brady with my words rather than my stubborn friend, hoping he might have more sense.  “If you’re not, she could go over some stuff with you while we cook.”
    My interruption of their moment seemed to cool the ardor of their thirsts, both of them returning quickly to normal, much to my relief.  But what about the next time?  What if I had been a few minutes later?
    Straightening my spine, I stood strong as both of them gave me the stink eye.  A lesser-determined girl would’ve withered in the face of such scathing looks.  But I was no such girl.  My determination arose from staring down a likely life-or-death situation.  This was no joking matter and they’d just have to suck it up.
    As I waited for one or both of them to argue with me, I wondered what on earth I’d do then, if they refused.  What if I couldn’t stop them?  What if their appetites overcame me and I was helpless against them?
    I thought my anxiety was at fever pitch until Brady looked me dead in the eye and calmly blew my hopes out of the water.  At his words, my angst rose several notches, all the way to DefCon Five.
    “It’s your turn to cook.  We’ll come set the table when dinner is almost ready.  School is more important than you two catching up on gossip.”
    “It didn’t look like you two were working very hard when I came in,” I tossed out acerbically.
    “Then maybe you should knock first, brat,” Brady suggested angrily, rising from the bed to physically guide me toward the door.  His use of the insulting pet name he’d given me during childhood alerted me to his state of mind.  He only called me brat when he was losing patience with me, something that happened very seldom these days.
    In his rough, brotherly way, Brady pushed me through the door and shut it snugly behind me.  With growing panic, I held my breath as I listened for him to turn the lock.  I literally closed my eyes and prayed that he would not.  And he didn’t.  I didn’t release my breath until I heard the mattress springs squeak under his weight as he returned to his place beside Lacey.
    I listened unabashedly at the door.  I’m sure they knew I hadn’t yet moved away.  When I heard them talking again, I made some noises that I hoped sounded like me receding from in front of Brady’s door.  And then I leaned in to listen again.
    They were talking and laughing so quietly, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.  Although it was very frustrating, I reminded myself that my hearing wasn’t what I needed to rely on most anyway.  It wasn’t the sense that alerted me to the problem in the first place.  I’d felt it stimulate the sixth sense with which I’d been recently endowed. I needed to learn to rely more on that, to hone that sense to radar precision so that my chances of averting disaster in the future would be greater.
    I gently leaned my forehead against Brady’s door.  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to drown out as much sensory data as I could, focusing all my attention on that feeling of hunger that still gnawed at my insides the tiniest bit.  It was dramatically less, but it was still there.  And it was enough to worry me.
    Unlike what had happened minutes before, when the hunger hit this time, it crashed into me like a freight train going a thousand miles an hour.  Like a physical force, it slammed into me, pushing me across the hall and pinning me to the wall opposite Brady’s door.  I was stunned, deeply stunned, so several seconds had elapsed before I found my wits, and my feet. 
    Eventually, I managed to stagger across the narrow hallway and stumble