After that, it was easier to be one of them.  I wandered through and around the trees, taking a close look at the natural world that surrounded me; the little ants that marched in crooked lines, the birds that hunted for grub and battled for territory, the minute forest flora that followed the sun on its trek across the sky.

I observed the others in their daily habits.  Those who stared and muttered to themselves ignored me completely; blocking me as I blocked them when I slept.  Who were they talking to?  How long had they been talking?

The day began to want and I found myself practicing tree-climbing, as Keith had taught me.  It wasn't as easy without the numbness I had felt last night, but I could feel myself improving.  Like remembering how to ride a bicycle after years and years away from it.

Night returned.  I climbed back into the tree and, despite the fact that I never really felt tired here, I fell asleep.  The next morning, I woke with a start, but didn’t fall through the tree limb.

The days began to melt into one another, the pleasant flow shattered only by the surreal jolt of my nightly insistence on sleeping and, to my discomfort, dreaming.

I learned to play the games of tag and King-of-the-hill as the ghosts played them.  I learned that nobody had died at the hand of another human being; it had all been accidents.  When somebody suddenly disappeared from the routine, I learned that he or she had either gone back or gone on.  I didn’t miss them.  Nobody did.  It was difficult to really feel grief or sorrow here.  Restlessness, maybe, but never the need to cry like we all did when we first arrived.

A new girl came, Sydney, from New Zealand, maybe twelve years old.  She had lost her way while hiking with her family and fallen from a cliff.  I found myself speaking with her, comforting her, teaching her how to make a place for herself among us.  She cried and screamed and fought but, in the end, she smiled and accepted what had happened to her, the way we all did.  Not happy, not sad, but content.

I began to lose track of time.  The day blended into night, and I began catching myself neglecting my sleep routine as I lost myself observing.  The growth of moss against the bark of an oak, the sway and rustle of the trees in the wind, the way the trunks stretched with infinitesimal movement.  Slowly, I stopped wanting to play games as I elected to watch everything.

Sitting there on a log, feeling but not really feeling the soft rot of the wood beneath me, I could gauge the soon-to-be winner of the game the other ghosts were playing, who was cheating, who had been cheated.

There was no rustle of leaves or sound of breath, but I could feel the approach of another ghost.

"Why do you sleep every night?"

I glanced up as Tita sat down on the log next to me, her heart shaped lips pursed in mild concern.  Only mild, though.  Nothing here was serious.

I frowned, considering how best to answer.  The privacy, for one thing, was nice; when I climbed up at night, nobody bothered me.  The tree was my personal, Pro-Christine zone.  But, technically, I could have that anytime I closed my eyes and ignored the other ghosts.

Why did I sleep when it wasn't necessary?

"I want to be alive," I decided.

"An odd way of showing it," Tita remarked, raising one brow at me. "Most people who dream their own deaths tend to stop sleeping."

If they ever bothered in the first place.  The majority of the ghosts here tended to ignore the fact that we could mimic sleep altogether.  I wasn't like them.  I didn't want to be like them.

"The pain is part of being alive," I explained. "Just like the sleeping."

That sounded more morbid than I'd intended, but Tita didn't seem perturbed.  Wonder what other horrible things I could get away with saying here, where nobody would be bothered by anything.

A light scuffle broke out between a pair of boys not far from us.  Halfheartedly, they swung at one another, not really angry, but they disturbed the peace enough to garner attention.  Several yards away, Keith scowled.

"Stop that," he snapped.

Immediately, the boys stilled, their quarrel forgotten.

Keith, King of the Ghosts.  Hear him roar.

I turned my attention back to Tita.

"By the way, our English is really good," I pointed out.  Tita laughed.

"So's your Portugese."

I nodded, smiling to myself.  Knew it.