What Happened to Those Girls Summary, Characters and Themes

What Happened to Those Girls by Carlyn Greenwald is a young-adult mystery about friendship, exclusion, grief, and the dangerous stories people tell themselves to survive guilt and fear. The novel follows Emma Tedesco after three girls she considered her closest friends die during a camping trip from which they deliberately excluded her.

What begins as Emma’s attempt to understand their apparent deaths develops into an investigation involving hidden recordings, local legends, missing evidence, murder, and several painful truths about the people she loved. At its center, the book asks whether friendship can still matter when it has caused deep emotional harm.

Summary

Emma Tedesco has spent years feeling slightly out of place even among her three closest friends, Paisley Horne, Harlow Spielman, and Opal Bushida. During one of their usual Friday dinners, she senses that the other girls are keeping something from her, and her suspicion becomes painful when their planned sleepover is suddenly canceled even though everyone except Emma apparently knew about the change.

Emma later visits the Mystic Museum, where she works, and unexpectedly meets Paisley’s older sister, Rebecca “Beck” Horne. Beck accidentally reveals the truth: Paisley, Harlow, and Opal have gone camping at Kingston National Park without Emma, using the very trip Emma had researched and helped plan.

The betrayal devastates Emma because it confirms her worst fear that she is only conditionally accepted by the group. When she angrily confronts Paisley through text, Paisley responds with a strange warning that she is doing Emma a favor because they are all going to die, but she immediately deletes the message.

Convinced that Paisley is mocking her, Emma drives to Kingston that night to confront the girls. She loses her courage when she reaches the campground, punctures one of Paisley’s tires with a crowbar instead, and angrily shouts threats before noticing a mysterious long-haired woman watching her from nearby.

Emma flees and later sees what appears to be the same woman standing in the road, even though the woman could not reasonably have traveled there so quickly. Emma convinces herself that exhaustion caused the sighting, but the following morning she learns that Harlow and Opal have been found dead near a cliff while Paisley is missing.

Authorities initially decide that the girls probably died in a hiking accident. Emma attends the funerals and Paisley’s vigil while struggling with grief made more complicated by the anger she felt toward them shortly before their deaths.

Eight months later, remains believed to belong to Paisley are found in a coyote den. Authorities claim animals damaged the body, yet Paisley’s teeth are so badly destroyed that dental identification cannot be performed, a detail that immediately troubles Beck.

At Paisley’s burial, Beck asks Emma to leave the ceremony with her, and the two visit another part of the cemetery. Beck explains that the damage to Paisley’s teeth seems deliberate and points out that Harlow and Opal were also missing identifying body parts, leading her to believe someone murdered all three girls.

Emma then receives anonymous messages from someone claiming that the deaths were not accidental. The sender provides a recovered video showing Paisley alive in the forest on the night she supposedly died, talking about the local Witch of Kingston before the girls apparently notice a frightening figure nearby.

Emma finally tells Beck about Paisley’s deleted warning. They provide the video to investigators, but Emma soon discovers another dangerous piece of evidence: Paisley’s phone contains an accidental recording of Emma threatening the girls beside Paisley’s car on the night they died.

The anonymous sender knows Emma was in Kingston that night, which means the person may have access to Paisley’s missing phone. Emma therefore joins Beck on a secret trip back to Kingston, partly because she wants justice and partly because she fears the recording could make her appear responsible for the murders.

During their drive, Beck reveals that Paisley deliberately excluded Emma because she thought traveling with Emma would be difficult. Beck also describes Paisley’s cruel treatment of her own sister, showing Emma that the charming friend she knew could behave very differently in private.

In Kingston, the anonymous source fails to meet them and leaves only one instruction: ask about the witch. Emma and Beck begin questioning residents, many of whom become visibly uncomfortable when the legend is mentioned, while a young girl claims she saw a blood-covered woman running through the woods on the night Emma’s friends disappeared.

The investigation draws them toward Ranger Natalie Medina, local stories about the witch, and a carved wooden figure recovered from the dead girls’ campsite. Their suspicions increase when someone with long hair approaches their tent during the night and runs away when an alarm suddenly sounds.

They soon meet Ivy, another camper who was in Kingston during the original weekend. Ivy says another traveler, Vanessa, disappeared that same night, but Emma becomes suspicious when a button from Ivy’s jacket matches one found outside Emma and Beck’s tent.

Emma and Beck break into Ivy’s van and discover Harlow’s missing phone. Ivy catches them but explains that Harlow dropped it while intoxicated and that she hid it afterward because she feared becoming a suspect, an explanation Emma ultimately believes.

Harlow’s phone contains another video showing Paisley insisting that Harlow and Opal hike with her to an abandoned mining settlement. Paisley speaks about energy, the full moon, and the witch with unusual seriousness, suggesting she had a private reason for visiting the location.

Emma and Beck later hike to the mining town themselves. There they discover bloody pliers, Paisley’s ripped-out fingernails, Harlow’s missing ear, damaged teeth, burned hair, and other remains hidden in a ritual fire, proving that Harlow and Opal did not simply fall from a cliff.

A label on the pliers leads them to an abandoned watchtower, where they find Paisley’s missing phone. Beck discovers Emma’s threatening recording before Emma can erase it, forcing Emma to admit that she secretly came to Kingston, damaged Paisley’s car, saw the mysterious woman, and partly joined the investigation because she wanted the recording gone.

Emma expects Beck to reject her, but Beck eventually admits that she has also kept information secret. Paisley had traveled to Kingston the night before the camping trip, meaning her interest in the location began earlier than anyone realized.

Beck deletes Emma’s recording because she knows Emma did not kill the girls. Their growing honesty strengthens their connection, and after months of shared grief and several days of danger, their friendship develops into romance.

Their investigation becomes physically dangerous when a masked attacker with a knife ambushes them near the watchtower. Beck wounds the attacker in the shoulder, while Emma manages to knock the person from the tower before they call Ranger Evan for help.

Evan takes them to his ranger station and initially appears helpful, but he soon reveals that he is the anonymous sender. He admits that he discovered Paisley’s phone and believes Kingston has a history of killings connected to people obsessed with the witch legend.

The situation changes when Evan points a gun at them. He reveals that Emma saw Vanessa fleeing on the original night, that he later murdered Vanessa, and that Vanessa’s remains were mistakenly identified as Paisley’s after coyotes damaged the body.

Beck uses pepper spray during the confrontation, and Evan is killed when his own gun fires during the struggle. Evidence in his cabin proves that he murdered Vanessa and confirms that he had also been the masked attacker, but Emma and Beck still cannot explain what happened to the real Paisley.

Their search takes them to the Kingston Motel, where the mystery changes completely. A filthy, injured, severely malnourished Paisley appears outside their room, alive after eight months of being presumed dead.

Paisley claims that a woman connected to the witch legend attacked her, Harlow, and Opal after they attempted a ritual. She says the woman murdered Harlow and Opal, mutilated them, tore out Paisley’s fingernails, and forced Paisley to hide because she believed the killer was still watching her.

Her description seems to identify Natalie as the attacker. Emma rushes to retrieve Beck’s repaired car, convinced that Natalie and Evan were partners, but during the drive Beck contacts her and reveals that their new theory is wrong.

The truth is eventually exposed through Paisley’s own actions. She had secretly gone to Kingston to begin a ritual she believed might improve her failing acting career after a devastating professional rejection, and she needed to return with Harlow and Opal to complete it.

When Harlow mocked the ritual and attempted to leave, Paisley attacked her with a heavy piece of wood and killed her. Knowing Opal would tell the truth, Paisley killed her as well, then completed the ritual using material taken from their bodies.

Paisley mutilated Harlow and Opal, removed her own fingernails, planted evidence, abandoned her belongings, moved the bodies, and disappeared into the motel. The legend of the witch became a convenient explanation she could use both for others and for herself rather than fully confronting what she had done.

When Emma returns to the motel, Paisley is attacking Beck because Beck has discovered the truth. Paisley admits what happened and refuses to allow either girl to leave alive, stabbing Emma badly in the thigh before Emma strikes Paisley in the neck with a broken lamp while trying to save Beck.

Emergency responders eventually rescue Emma and Beck. Natalie helps Emma survive her blood loss and later explains that Kingston’s attachment to the witch legend has allowed generations of violence to be misunderstood or concealed, while Evan exploited the same belief to hide his own crimes.

In the months afterward, Emma and Beck begin therapy and rebuild their lives. Emma works toward art school and becomes more accepting of her neurodivergence, while Beck abandons the expectations others placed on her and begins discovering interests that genuinely belong to her.

At the cemetery, Emma finally accepts that Harlow, Opal, and Paisley can be mourned without pretending they treated her well. She cannot change what happened to them, but she can stop defining friendship through rejection, uncertainty, and the constant effort to earn a place beside people who repeatedly made her feel unwanted.

Characters

Emma Tedesco

Emma is the emotional and psychological center of What Happened to Those Girls, and much of the novel depends on the difference between how she interprets herself and what her behavior eventually proves about her. She begins the story convinced that she is socially difficult, unusually sensitive, and possibly tolerated rather than genuinely wanted by the people she calls her best friends.

Her fear of exclusion affects almost every early decision she makes. Discovering that Paisley, Harlow, and Opal deliberately went camping without her is therefore not simply the loss of one social event; it confirms years of anxiety that she does not understand the rules governing her own friendships.

Emma’s response also reveals her anger, which is important because the book refuses to make her an entirely innocent victim of social cruelty. She drives to Kingston, damages Paisley’s car, verbally threatens her friends, conceals what she did, and later joins Beck’s investigation partly because she wants to destroy evidence that could implicate her.

These choices make Emma morally imperfect without making her responsible for what happened. Her development depends on learning that anger toward someone who dies does not become guilt simply because that person can no longer answer for the harm they caused.

Emma also gradually develops a clearer understanding of her possible autism. Her difficulty reading social signals, intense interests, sensitivity to rejection, and tendency to analyze interactions repeatedly have caused her to interpret difference as personal failure.

Beck’s acceptance gives Emma another way to view those traits. Instead of treating her interests and communication style as defects that must be hidden to maintain friendship, Beck responds to them as genuine parts of Emma’s personality.

Emma’s greatest transformation comes when she nearly allows survivor’s guilt to convince her that she should have died with her friends. After narrowly escaping a speeding truck, she recognizes with sudden certainty that she wants to live, and from that point her desire for survival becomes stronger than her need to punish herself.

By the end of the story, Emma no longer needs to turn Paisley, Harlow, and Opal into perfect friends merely because they are dead. She learns that grief and criticism can exist together, and that remembering someone truthfully can be more honest than transforming a painful relationship into something it never was.

Rebecca “Beck” Horne

Beck initially appears to Emma as everything Emma wishes she could be: confident, physically capable, rebellious, socially impressive, and apparently unconcerned with other people’s opinions. The investigation gradually reveals that much of this image hides years of insecurity, family pressure, loneliness, and emotional damage.

Her relationship with Paisley is central to understanding her. Beck loved her younger sister but was also repeatedly criticized, controlled, and eventually physically attacked by her, leaving Beck with feelings of relief after Paisley’s disappearance that become a major source of shame.

That conflict makes Beck’s grief unusually complicated. She believes she should miss Paisley without reservation, yet part of her remembers that life became quieter and safer once Paisley was gone.

Beck’s connection with Emma grows partly because Emma understands this contradiction. Both girls loved people who treated them badly, and neither can comfortably fit their grief into the simple expectation that the dead must be remembered only with affection.

Her apparent fearlessness also changes throughout the book. Beck is willing to break into Ivy’s van, challenge suspicious adults, enter dangerous locations, and physically defend Emma, but she is still capable of panic, uncertainty, and emotional collapse.

Those moments prevent her courage from becoming unrealistic. Beck is brave because she continues acting while afraid, not because fear has no effect on her.

Her romantic relationship with Emma gives Beck a form of intimacy that is different from the relationships that previously defined her. She can admit confusion about her future, her sexuality, her family, competitive sports, and Paisley without being judged or forced into a predetermined role.

By the ending, Beck has stopped trying to live according to the expectations attached to being the surviving Horne daughter. Therapy, new activities, work, and her relationship with Emma allow her to experiment with identity rather than replacing Paisley’s future with another version designed by her family.

Paisley Horne

Paisley is the most disturbing and complicated character in What Happened to Those Girls because the reader’s understanding of her changes repeatedly. She is first presented through Emma’s memories as charismatic, socially powerful, beautiful, ambitious, and occasionally capable of making Emma feel welcomed when others did not.

Her treatment of people close to her reveals a more controlling side. She excludes Emma from the camping trip, dominates Harlow and Opal’s decisions, criticizes Beck constantly, and becomes increasingly cruel when events do not match her expectations.

Paisley’s acting ambitions are especially important because her professional rejection damages a sense of identity built heavily around success, beauty, and being chosen. When she is told that she looks too old to play a teenager, the rejection is not merely disappointing to her; she experiences it as evidence that time is running out on the future she has imagined.

Her violence toward Beck before the camping trip shows that the murders do not emerge from nowhere. Throwing a heavy trophy during an argument demonstrates that Paisley already has difficulty controlling rage when she feels threatened, humiliated, or powerless.

The ritual in Kingston gives Paisley a structure through which she believes she can regain control. She may not literally believe in a supernatural witch, but she becomes desperate enough to treat spiritual energy and ritual completion as meaningful tools for changing her fortune.

Harlow’s refusal threatens more than the ritual itself. Paisley experiences the mockery and resistance as another loss of control, and her response becomes fatal when she beats Harlow to death and then kills Opal because Opal has witnessed the crime.

What makes Paisley especially frightening is what happens afterward. Rather than confessing, she carefully manufactures a false version of events by mutilating the bodies, injuring herself, moving evidence, abandoning personal belongings, and hiding for months.

Her eventual description of the killer as a possessed woman suggests that the witch story has become psychologically useful to her. Whether she fully believes her own explanation or simply needs it to avoid saying “I did this,” the legend allows her to place responsibility outside herself.

Paisley’s final attack on Beck and Emma removes any remaining possibility that her violence belonged only to one moment of panic. Faced again with exposure, she chooses murder as a solution, demonstrating how completely self-preservation has replaced moral responsibility.

Harlow Spielman

Harlow is initially one of the least sympathetic members of Emma’s friend group because Emma remembers her as openly resistant to Emma’s presence. Unlike Paisley, who sometimes offers warmth, or Opal, who occasionally forms a genuine bond with Emma, Harlow rarely hides her irritation.

Her behavior contributes significantly to Emma’s insecurity. The private group chat and Harlow’s participation in excluding Emma show that she accepts a social structure in which Emma remains close enough to be useful but distant enough to be removed when the others prefer it.

Yet the later material from Harlow’s perspective complicates this image. During the final camping trip, she becomes the person most willing to challenge Paisley’s increasingly controlling behavior.

Harlow is intoxicated, tired, cold, and uninterested in wandering through the forest simply because Paisley insists on continuing the night. She also approaches the witch legend more skeptically than Opal and is less willing to allow fear or mystical language to determine her behavior.

Her death comes directly from that resistance. When she mocks Paisley’s ritual and attempts to leave, she becomes the first person to openly refuse Paisley at the moment when Paisley’s need for control is greatest.

Harlow’s characterization therefore contains an uncomfortable contradiction. She can be petty, excluding, and unkind to Emma while still showing independence and rational resistance in the situation that kills her.

The novel does not require Emma to transform Harlow into a good friend after her death. Emma eventually accepts that Harlow treated her badly and that Harlow nevertheless deserved to live, allowing moral judgment and compassion to remain separate.

Opal Bushida

Opal is the member of the original friend group with whom Emma’s memories are most emotionally mixed. She participates in excluding Emma, yet Emma also remembers genuine moments of intellectual companionship and ease between them.

Their time studying statistics suggests that Opal’s behavior changes when she is away from Paisley and Harlow. She can be encouraging, intelligent, uncertain about her future, and capable of relating to Emma without constantly reinforcing the group’s hierarchy.

This makes Opal’s involvement in the camping exclusion harder for Emma to process. Emma cannot easily label her as either a real friend or a false one because the evidence supports both possibilities.

Opal is also the character most genuinely frightened by the Witch of Kingston legend. The enclosed forest makes her uncomfortable, and she is far more willing than Harlow to believe that something supernatural may exist around them.

Her guilt about leaving Emma behind is particularly revealing. Even before the killings occur, Opal privately recognizes that what the group did was wrong and thinks she needs to repair the damage.

Her murder becomes especially tragic because she is killed largely for witnessing what Paisley has done. Once Harlow dies, Opal’s instinct is to leave and presumably tell the truth, making her a threat to Paisley’s attempt to protect herself.

Emma’s later grief for Opal centers on unrealized possibilities. She wonders whether they might have developed a healthier friendship outside Paisley’s influence, but Opal’s death leaves that question permanently unanswered.

Ranger Evan

Evan operates through deception more successfully than almost anyone else in the novel. For much of the investigation he exists mainly as Natalie’s distant ranger partner, which allows him to appear peripheral while secretly shaping Emma and Beck’s return to Kingston.

As the anonymous texter, Evan gives them genuine information about the case. This makes his manipulation effective because many of his claims are true, allowing Emma and Beck to mistake access to evidence for moral reliability.

His murder of Vanessa exposes the darker purpose behind his behavior. After seeing Vanessa escape, he eventually captures and kills her, then allows circumstances and animal damage to help erase her identity.

Evan also understands how Kingston’s culture can protect him. A community accustomed to interpreting death through accidents, wilderness danger, or witch mythology creates exactly the uncertainty a predator can exploit.

His collection of belongings from female travelers makes his threat broader than a single murder. It suggests a pattern of predatory interest in vulnerable women moving through the forest.

Evan’s decision to lure Emma back is ultimately a mistake produced by his own need for control. He wants information about the woman Emma saw and assumes he can manipulate the investigation without becoming its target.

Once Emma understands that he is the anonymous sender, his helpful persona collapses quickly. His death during the struggle ends one mystery while revealing that he was never responsible for Harlow and Opal’s deaths, emphasizing that more than one human source of violence has been hidden beneath the same local legend.

Ranger Natalie Medina

Natalie is repeatedly positioned as a possible threat because Emma’s investigation depends heavily on uncertain interpretations. Her familiarity with Emma, access to the original campsite, knowledge of Kingston, connection to Evan, and nervous reactions to certain evidence all make suspicion seem reasonable.

Her behavior, however, consistently contains evidence of genuine concern. She gives Emma and Beck communication devices, warns them about danger, offers police assistance, checks mechanical information for them, and later responds immediately when Emma is badly injured.

Natalie’s role demonstrates how fear can distort judgment. Once Paisley identifies a female ranger as her supposed attacker, Emma reorganizes every earlier interaction with Natalie so that ordinary behavior suddenly appears murderous.

The later revelation shows that Natalie is not the hidden killer but another person damaged by Kingston’s culture of secrecy. She carries guilt for seeing Vanessa flee and failing to understand the danger she was in.

Natalie also provides one of the clearest explanations of how the witch legend affects the town. Generations of superstition have encouraged people to accept suspicious deaths, protect local reputation, and interpret outside victims as part of something larger than ordinary human violence.

By helping Emma and Beck after the truth emerges, Natalie becomes part of the movement away from secrecy. Her willingness to support them before federal investigators represents a rejection of the habits that allowed violence in Kingston to remain hidden.

Ivy

Ivy is constructed as a convincing suspect because nearly every fact surrounding her can initially be interpreted in two ways. She was present during the original weekend, possesses Harlow’s missing phone, returns to Kingston months later, knows about Vanessa, and wears clothing matching evidence found beside Emma and Beck’s tent.

Her actual behavior is less sinister but still morally complicated. She did take Harlow’s phone and deliberately hide it from investigators because she feared becoming implicated in the deaths and Vanessa’s disappearance.

That choice mirrors Emma’s own instinct to protect herself by hiding incriminating information. Both characters demonstrate how innocent people can make suspicious decisions when they believe the truth may be interpreted against them.

Ivy’s concern about Vanessa is genuine. Her return to Kingston reflects persistence and loyalty toward a missing person who otherwise receives far less attention than Paisley.

Her eventual role in dealing with Vanessa’s remains strengthens this contrast. Vanessa, unlike the famous actress’s daughter, is easily overlooked, and Ivy becomes one of the few people determined to restore dignity to her story.

Vanessa

Vanessa is physically absent for much of the story, yet her disappearance is essential to the mystery. She initially appears to be a mysterious traveler associated with Paisley’s sudden fascination with Kingston’s supernatural reputation.

Because she disappears on the same night as the original deaths, Emma and Beck consider several possibilities. She might be another victim, the mysterious long-haired woman, an accomplice, or even the killer.

The truth is far more tragic. Vanessa is the woman Emma saw fleeing through Kingston, but she is escaping danger rather than causing it.

Evan later catches and murders her, and the destruction of her remains allows authorities to misidentify them as Paisley’s. Vanessa therefore becomes literally erased by a case dominated by concern for someone wealthier, more famous, and more socially visible.

Her treatment after death exposes an important inequality in whose disappearance receives attention. Paisley is mourned publicly for months while Vanessa’s identity is absorbed into someone else’s story.

The later recovery and proper handling of Vanessa’s remains restore only a small part of what was taken from her. Her fate remains one of the clearest examples of how easily vulnerable people can disappear when institutions accept convenient explanations.

Leslie Van Dutch / Mrs. Horne

Paisley and Beck’s mother is presented as a woman whose grief coexists with years of parental pressure. Her background in entertainment and emphasis on femininity, beauty, social polish, and conventional success shape both daughters in different ways.

Beck resists those expectations and eventually becomes the daughter her mother largely stops trying to mold. Paisley embraces them more fully, but the apparent success of that conformity creates its own pressure because achievement and appearance become tied to her sense of worth.

After Paisley’s disappearance, Mrs. Horne’s grief becomes disorganized and difficult to express directly. Her strange conversations about shopping, saunas, and living forever suggest a mind attempting to avoid a reality it cannot comfortably name.

Her parenting is also implicated in Paisley’s decline. After Paisley injures Beck with the trophy, the family considers serious intervention but abandons the idea when Paisley apologizes and appears stable again.

The ending shifts her attention toward Beck. Calling Beck her miracle baby after the final ordeal suggests that she is beginning to see the surviving daughter as someone whose needs require immediate recognition rather than comparison with Paisley.

Emma’s Mother

Emma’s mother appears most clearly through moments of care rather than through the central investigation. When Emma dissociates in the shower after reading disturbing details about the remains, her mother helps her physically without requiring Emma to explain everything first.

She also provides Emma with techniques that later become useful when Beck suffers a panic attack. This detail shows that the emotional tools Emma uses under pressure have partly come from support she received at home.

At the end, Emma’s mother initially responds to the Kingston ordeal by asking how Emma could have made such reckless decisions. Her willingness to reconsider the wording of that question becomes more important than the mistake itself.

She recognizes that grief changed Emma and that their damaged communication cannot be repaired simply by treating Emma as the only person who must change. Her apology opens the possibility of a more balanced relationship built on listening rather than correction.

Emma’s Father

Emma’s father is less central but still represents the limits of loving someone without fully understanding what they need. Early in the story, he notices Emma’s distress after the camping betrayal but cannot easily reach her.

His concern is real even when communication fails. This distinction matters because Emma often interprets imperfect connection as evidence that connection does not exist.

The ending suggests that her relationship with both parents can improve once the family stops reducing conflict to Emma’s supposed difficulty. Her willingness to tell them the entire story becomes an act of trust after months of secrecy.

Owen Tedesco

Owen is the sibling who first tells Emma that something has happened to her friends. His urgent instruction that she search for them online becomes the moment when her anger over exclusion is replaced by horror.

Emma’s relationship with Owen is later reconsidered through the example of Beck and Paisley. After witnessing how resentment and emotional distance damaged that sibling relationship, Emma becomes more conscious of the possibility that similar distance could grow within her own family.

Her decision to ask Owen to play a video game with her is deliberately ordinary. After extraordinary violence and loss, choosing a small shared activity represents Emma’s new willingness to protect relationships before resentment hardens.

Liam Tedesco

Liam plays a smaller role but contributes to Emma’s changing understanding of family affection. His gift of a “Feel Better Soon” cake after Emma returns home may appear simple, yet Emma recognizes it as evidence of care she previously failed to notice.

That recognition supports one of Emma’s broader developments. She becomes less focused on a single ideal form of belonging and more capable of seeing connection in imperfect, ordinary actions.

Amari

Amari appears mainly through Emma’s workplace at the Mystic Museum. Their conversation about supposedly haunted objects gives Emma temporary relief from the anxiety surrounding her friends.

The character also helps establish the museum as a place where Emma feels comfortable among people who do not demand conventional social behavior from her. This environment contrasts with the constant uncertainty she experiences around Paisley, Harlow, and Opal.

Although Amari does not participate in the central investigation, the character contributes to the sense that Emma already has other possible communities before she learns to recognize their value.

Cheryl

Cheryl represents Kingston residents who treat the Witch of Kingston as more than an entertaining story. She enthusiastically explains a version in which the witch protects the forest and punishes disrespectful outsiders.

Her interpretation connects the legend to Kingston’s history of wildfire and local suffering. This gives the myth an understandable emotional origin even while the belief becomes dangerous when it is used to explain real violence.

Cheryl is not presented as a murderer or deliberate conspirator. Her significance comes from showing how folklore can become part of community identity strongly enough that suspicious events are interpreted through inherited stories rather than investigated on their own terms.

Gerry

Gerry initially appears suspicious because his explanation for Beck’s damaged fuel line seems conveniently ordinary. Emma and Beck are already frightened enough to interpret mechanical failure as possible sabotage, which places him briefly inside their growing circle of suspects.

His role demonstrates how the investigation repeatedly turns ordinary uncertainty into apparent evidence. A worn or damaged vehicle can look like attempted murder when every new event is viewed through fear.

Gerry later protects Emma when Natalie grabs her wrist and quickly provides Beck’s keys. His actions reinforce the danger of assuming that everyone connected to Kingston belongs to a single conspiracy.

The Young Kingston Witness

The unnamed child who reports seeing a blood-covered woman in the woods plays a small but crucial role in the investigation. Her statement gives Emma external confirmation that the long-haired figure she saw on the night of the deaths may have been real.

At first, the child’s story appears to support the possibility of a female murderer connected to the witch legend. Only much later does Emma understand that both she and the child probably witnessed Vanessa while she was fleeing danger.

The character therefore illustrates how accurate observations can lead to inaccurate conclusions. The child reports what she saw honestly, but Emma’s interpretation changes as new information becomes available.

Themes

Belonging, Exclusion, and Conditional Friendship

Emma’s deepest fear is not simply loneliness but conditional belonging. In What Happened to Those Girls, she already has friends at the beginning, yet she constantly worries that her place among them depends on behaving correctly, understanding unspoken rules, and avoiding whatever parts of herself others may find difficult.

The secret camping trip confirms how fragile that belonging actually is. Paisley, Harlow, and Opal do not openly end the friendship; instead, they create a separate experience, lie about it, and leave Emma to discover that the group can function perfectly well without her.

That form of exclusion is especially painful because it denies Emma the clarity of a direct rejection. She is close enough to believe she belongs while repeatedly receiving evidence that the others have an inner circle from which she can be removed whenever convenient.

The private group chat later gives this emotional structure a physical form. Emma is forced to see that her friends maintained a social space in which she simply did not exist.

Beck offers a contrasting model of connection. She does not require Emma to reduce her enthusiasm, hide her possible autism, or pretend that her complicated feelings about the dead girls are inappropriate.

By the ending, Emma understands that friendship should not require continuous proof that she deserves to remain included. Her movement away from Paisley’s social world is therefore not merely recovery from bereavement; it is a rejection of relationships in which acceptance must constantly be earned.

Grief, Anger, and Survivor’s Guilt

Grief in the story rarely appears as pure sadness. Emma mourns people she was furious with, while Beck mourns a sister whose disappearance initially brought relief from years of emotional mistreatment.

Both girls believe these contradictions make them morally suspect. Emma thinks her threats against the girls somehow connect her to their deaths, while Beck fears that relief from Paisley’s abuse means she did not truly love her sister.

The novel repeatedly challenges that assumption. Death changes what can be repaired, but it does not rewrite the relationship that existed before death.

Emma’s anger at being excluded remains legitimate even after Harlow and Opal are murdered. Beck’s memories of Paisley’s cruelty remain real even when Paisley is believed dead.

This becomes especially important when Emma nearly accepts the idea that she should have died alongside her friends. Survivor’s guilt turns ordinary regret into an imagined moral debt, convincing her that remaining alive is somehow an injustice.

Her near collision with the truck interrupts that logic. Emma discovers through instinct rather than argument that she wants to survive, and that desire becomes a turning point in how she understands responsibility.

The ending allows grief to remain unresolved rather than converting it into forgiveness. Emma can mourn Harlow, Opal, and Paisley while admitting that none of them consistently gave her the friendship she needed, and Beck can acknowledge both love and relief without treating either feeling as proof that the other was false.

Folklore, Fear, and Human Violence

The Witch of Kingston legend repeatedly offers characters an explanation that is more dramatic and emotionally satisfying than ordinary human cruelty. Strange figures in the woods, ritual objects, mutilated remains, local warnings, and stories about protective supernatural forces make the possibility of a witch appear increasingly plausible.

The final truth does not make the legend irrelevant. Instead, it shows how dangerous a myth can become when people use it to interpret events before examining human motives.

Paisley uses ritual because she desperately wants control over a career that is slipping away from her. After committing murder, the witch becomes a convenient language for distancing herself from her own actions.

Evan uses Kingston’s culture differently. He understands that a place accustomed to suspicious deaths, wilderness accidents, and supernatural rumors offers protection to someone who wants real violence to remain misunderstood.

The town itself also participates in the problem. Residents have inherited stories linking outsiders, environmental destruction, death, and supernatural punishment, creating an atmosphere in which tragedy can be accepted as part of Kingston rather than questioned.

The most frightening force in the novel is therefore not supernatural. Human beings repeatedly choose violence, concealment, avoidance, or convenient explanations, and the legend makes those choices harder to identify.

Fear becomes dangerous not because believing in strange things automatically causes harm, but because fear can make an invented explanation feel preferable to confronting what another person is capable of doing.

Identity, Self-Acceptance, and Choosing a Future

Emma and Beck both begin the story with identities shaped heavily by other people’s expectations. Emma thinks of herself through the reactions of friends who have made her feel difficult, while Beck has spent years resisting the image of femininity, athletic success, family respectability, and conventional adulthood surrounding the Horne family.

Their growing relationship creates space for both girls to speak without performing. Emma can discuss being bisexual, possibly autistic, socially uncertain, intensely interested in particular subjects, and angry with people she also loved.

Beck can admit that she is gay, that she hated much of competitive volleyball despite being talented at it, that she does not know what career she wants, and that life became easier in certain ways when Paisley disappeared.

These admissions matter because neither girl immediately provides the other with a new identity to adopt. Instead, they make uncertainty acceptable.

The ending extends this process into their futures. Emma continues pursuing illustration and begins approaching neurodivergence as something to understand rather than evidence that she has failed socially.

Beck experiments with surfing, wildlife volunteering, CPR training, and employment rather than rushing to replace Paisley’s expected future. Both girls begin therapy, allowing recovery to become an ongoing process rather than a dramatic moment of completion.

Their relationship succeeds because it is based less on fitting an established role and more on being recognized accurately. After spending much of the story around relationships defined by control, secrecy, and exclusion, choosing each other becomes an act of choosing lives in which identity does not have to be negotiated for permission.