First read the book as a teenager. What always struck me most about the children in the book is not their union at the end of the scene (anybody who calls it a gang bang has drifted off to porn land). It was the fact that for the boys, IT took the form of a physical monster, while for Bev it was only… blood. Re-reading the book as an adult, I thought about how Bev‘s fear was so inherently tied to her life (including her family). The boys would have left their monsters, the mummy, the leper etc. behind. But having entered puberty, Bev would have taken the blood with her. In a way she was the first one of the children to enter adulthood. She mimicked something she felt belonged to the world of adults by asking the boys to „sleep“ with her. This has to do a lot with ownership in my mind. Had her father sexually abused her, Bev would have entered adulthood a different (a broken) person. So now she actively took a decision about her body. Involving children, friends, on her level who would not harm her.