A kaleidoscope of words and images swirled and snapped, then came into crisp focus: they hadn’t ever run Ed out of town. That had been one more lie he’d told me to get me off the scent. They’d been willing to write off Beth as a runaway rather than risk drawing too much attention to Maureen and potentially to their parties. Now that Brenda was dead, they couldn’t look away any longer. That’s when I understood the raw truth of it: the men in charge were looking out for themselves. We were on our own, the girls of Pantown.