The Guidance by Marley Gibson

a grin. "I'm killer at blackjack."
    He laughs and lays out five cards in front of me, face-up. "These are Zener cards. We use them in a guessing game to test if a patient might have extrasensory perception. They were invented by a well-known psychologist named Karl Zener. There are twenty-five cards, made up of these symbols."
    I glance down at the cards laid out.

    "These are the cards I want you to concentrate on," he informs me. "I'm going to shuffle more and then take a card out of the deck one at a time. You won't see the face, but I'll ask you to identify the symbol on the card. And we'll keep going through the deck until you've had enough or are tired."
    Dr. K. reaches for a clipboard with some sort of score sheet on it. Geez, what if I can't do this and I fail? Then he'll think I'm a fraud and not really experiencing these conversations with spirits. As he turns over the first card and looks at it, my pulse accelerates. How will I know which symbol to pick? Will it be right? Wrong? Holy crap! This is worse than calculus!
    "Relax, Kendall," he repeats. "Focus on the card. Trust your instincts."
    I open my mouth to speak, but he stops me.
    "There's no rush."
    I close my eyes, picturing the rows of cards: circle, cross, square, star, squiggly thing.
    "Squiggly thing," I say.
    Not saying a word, Dr. K. makes a mark on his chart.
    "Well?"
    "I'll go over the results with you when we're done."
    I slump a bit in the chair, wanting immediate gratification. Guess I'll just have to be patient. I try to relax and control my breathing so I can see the cards in my mind's eye. He picks up another one and holds it up, the design facing toward him. It's not like I can make anything out through the thickness of the card.
    "Star."
    Another card.
    It's a square
, Emily whispers to me.
    Ugh! I wish she wouldn't tell me. "Square." What? She already told me.
    "Circle," I say for the next one, after a few moments.
    This one's a cross ...
    Put off, I smack my hands on the table. "Would you stop?"
    Dr. K. widens his eyes. "We just started."
    "No, not you." I close my mouth before I say too much. "Sorry. Go ahead."
    We go through the entire pack with me reporting each geometric shape. Over a hundred, at least. Emily gave me only a handful of the answers. Though doesn't that prove I talk to spirits, if one is helping me out?
    Last card. I'm exhausted. It's like my mind's been on a treadmill or something. I don't think I have the strength to make another guess.
    You're tired, Kendall. It's a circle ...
    "Emily! I told you not to tell me!"
    Dr. K. slowly looks up at me. "Who's Emily?"
    I panic. "No one."
    "Kendall, you have to trust me with the truth."
    Tell him ...
    I swallow hard. "Emily is the spirit who lives in my house and ... helps me out."
    "I see," he says. "Is she helping you out now?"
    I fold my hands together on top of the table, trying not to wring them together. "Yeah, I'm sorry. I only listened to a few of her answers. I really wanted to do this on my own."
    He doesn't seem fazed by this at all. Then I remember he deals with kids like me all the time. I only hope I'm one of the ones he actually believes.
    "How many answers did Emily assist with?"
    "About a dozen," I say.
    Swiftly moving his pen across the score sheet, Dr. Kindberg tallies up my results. "You're either very lucky or Emily was giving you the correct answers."
    "Seriously?" Why do I feel like dancing? "So how'd I do?"
    "Very impressive," he tells me. "You scored in the very high range, Kendall, showing significant psychic ability. Mind you, this is only one measure and we still have a lot of testing to do." He gathers up the cards, straightens them, and places them back into the cardboard container.
    My intuition tells me that he sort of thinks I'm full of shit.
    "You don't believe me, do you?"
    He reaches up and scrubs his left hand through his crewcut. "I'm not here to judge, Kendall. I'm here to test and diagnose and talk and decide the best course of action for