Continuity and Confusion

I wasn't sure if we were posting this week, due to the changes in schedule and material, but since I see that others have, here I go:

This short starts with a good sense of continuity.  I do not know for sure, but I assumed it starts in a dorm room; there are four young people sitting and talking about UFOs.  The narrator begins to tell us a story that she does not tell her companions.  The second full panel on the second page (I'm counting the two inset panels as part of the first panel) reflects the text over the first page very effectively.  Lucy, the narrator, tells us "I didn't understand it all at first, we were only eight after all, but I learnt more from Harriet than whatever science lessons I got at primary school" (2).  She shows us various print matter about UFOs, and we see Harriet with binoculars.  The next panel shows Harriet talking, but the word balloon only contains a mumble of thick ink.  She is saying a lot, and it is likely very dense; Lucy clearly does not understand what she is talking about.

The impression of continuity is present in the appearances of Lucy and Harriet, too.  They look almost the same from age eight through high school, minus some development in their bodies, so we know who they are all the way through the piece.

The first three panels of page four look desolate.  Each panel is empty of people, and the only signs of life are trees and grass, except in the third panel, where we see a police car and two officers, far out in the field.  These panels express a sense of hopelessness, which points back to the last panel on page three, in which Lucy is shut in her room, face down on the bed, presumably very upset.  She is likely feeling hopeless, and we see that reflected in the following panels.  Even the panel with Harriet's house for sale is mostly empty:  only the bottom third contains the image.

I felt a little confused about the last few panels.  When Lucy says her parents decided to give her a new start, too, I'm not sure what that means.  They seem to be moving.  Because her mother is hanging a picture, it seems to me that the whole family may have moved, but in the next panel, we are back to the young people from the first page.  I'm not sure if she is telling us this was her college apartment, or that her parents helped her get a place with some other people.  I also am not sure to what she is referring in the sixth panel on the final page when she writes "Of course, I don't tell them about that."  Who is them?  Her parents?  Her housemates, assuming the people pictured are her housemates.  What doesn't she tell them?  That her parents helped her make a new start?  That her friends watch videos of break-dancing potatoes?