Okay for a while I've been thinking that maybe the kids had a shortcut home, but maybe they weren't allowed to take the shortcut for a variety of reasons.
And maybe it isn't even a shortcut but rather a more interesting route to take home.
Maybe they didn't always take the same route everyday.
This could be a reason the kids lost track of Somer so quickly. Maybe she went the other route, or they went the other route. They wouldn't reveal this because they could get in trouble.
Because to me this is the only thing that allows me to make sense of the fact that they lost sight of her so quickly, or that she could frequently come home later then her sister and brother and they not know why.
What would it mean, I don't know, but I think this may have been the case that day.
I kind of think there wasn't a whole lot of restrictions on where they could walk. Or if there were, they didn't stick to them very closely, jmo. I just get the impression that they wandered along on the way home, stopping if they saw someone they knew, or crossing the street if they felt like it, etc. On that day, ST supposedly stopped to talk to a friend didn't he, and AT and Somer walked ahead. Then Somer got upset and ran ahead? I think I have that right. So if ST could stop and talk with a friend there just doesn't seem to be a real cohesion to the group...and obviously not, knowing that Somer wandered off from time to time. Such a shame