The story broke two days after the parents' meeting, and Palomo Grove—which had been rocked by Arleen's disclosures, but not overturned—sustained an almost mortal blow.

The Mad Girl's Tale had made interesting reading for the UFO sighting and Cancer Cure crowd, but it was essentially a bust. These new developments, however, touched a much more sensitive nerve. Here were four families whose solid, well-heeled lives had been shattered by a pact made by their own daughters. Was there some kind of cult involved, the press demanded to know? Was the anonymous father conceivably the same man, a seducer of young women whose very namelessness left endless room for speculation. And what of the Farrell child, who'd first blown the whistle on what was being called the League of Virgins? Had she been driven to more extreme behavior than her friends because, as the Chronicle was the first to report, she was actually infertile? Or had the others yet to unburden themselves of their true excesses? This was a story that would run and run. It had everything: sex, possession, families in chaos, small-town bitchery, sex, insanity and sex. What was more, it could only get better from here.

As the pregnancies advanced the press could follow the progress. And with luck there'd be some startling payoff. The children would be all triplets, or black, or born dead.

Oh, the possibilities!

It was hushed at the center of the storm; hushed and still. The girls heard the howls and accusations heaped on them from parents, press and peers alike, but weren't much touched by them. The process that had begun in the lake continued on its own inevitable way, and they let it shape their minds as it had, and did, their bodies. They were calm as the lake was calm; their surface so placid the most violent attack upon it left not so much as a ripple.

Nor did they seek each other out during this time. Their interest in each other, and indeed in the outside world, dwindled to zero. All they cared to do was sit at home growing fuller, while controversy raged around them. That too, despite its early promise, dwindled as the months went by, and new scandals claimed the public's attention. But the damage to the Grove's equilibrium had been done. The League of Virgins had put the town on the Ventura County map in a fashion it would never have wished upon itself, but, given the fact, was determined to profit by. The Grove had more visitors that autumn than it had enjoyed since its creation, people determined to be able to boast that they'd visited that place; Crazy-ville; the place where girls made eyes at anything that moved if the Devil told them to.

There were other changes in the town, which were not so observable as the full bars and the bustling Mall. Behind closed doors the children of the Grove had to fight more vehemently for their privileges, as their parents, particularly the fathers of daughters, withdrew freedoms previously taken for granted. These domestic frays cracked several families, and broke some entirely. The alcohol intakes went up correspondingly; Marvin's Food and Drug did exceptional business in hard liquor during October and November, the demand taking off into the stratosphere over the Christmas period, when, in addition to the usual festivities, incidents of drunkenness, adultery, wife-beating and exhibitionism turned Pa-lomo Grove into a sinners' paradise.

With the public holidays, and their private woundings, over, several families decided to move out of the Grove altogether, and a subtle reorganization of the town's social structure began, as properties thought desirable—such as those in the Crescents (now marred by the Farrells' presence)—fell in value, and were bought up by individuals who could never have dreamt of living in that neighborhood the summer before.

So many consequences, from a battle in troubled waters.

That battle had not gone unwitnessed, of course. What William Witt had learned of secrecy in his short life as a voyeur proved invaluable as subsequent events unfolded. More than once he came close to telling somebody what he'd seen at the lake, but he resisted the temptation, knowing that the brief stardom he'd earn from it would have to be set against suspicion and possible punishment. Not only that; there was every chance he'd not even be believed. He kept the memory alive in his own head, however, by going back to where it had happened on a regular basis. In fact he'd returned there the day after it had all happened, to see if he could spot the occupants of the lake. But the water was already retreating. It had shrunk by perhaps a third overnight. After a week it had gone entirely, revealing a fissure in the ground which was evidently a point of access to the caves that ran beneath the town.

He wasn't the only visitor to the spot. Once Arleen had unburdened herself of what had happened there that afternoon, countless sightseers came looking for the spot. The more perceptive among them quickly recognized it: the water had left the grass yellowed and dusted with dried silt. One or two even attempted to gain access to the caves, but the fissure presented a virtually straight drop with no ready means of descent. After a few days of fame the spot was left to itself and to William's solitary visits. It gave him a strange satisfaction, going there, despite the fear he felt. A sense of complicity' with the caves and their secret, not to mention the erotic rrisson that came when he stood where he'd stood that day, and imagined again the nakedness of the bathers.

The fate of the girls didn't much interest him. He read about them once in a while, and heard them talked about, but out of sight for William was pretty much out of mind. There were better things to watch. With the town in disarray he had much to spy on: casual seductions and abject slavery; furies; beatings; bloody-nosed farewells. One day, he thought, I'll write all of this down. It'll be called Witt's Book, and everyone in it will know, when it's published, that their secrets all belong to me.

When, on the infrequent occasions he did think of the girls' present condition, it was thoughts of Arleen he favored, simply because she was in a hospital where he couldn't see her even if he wanted to, and his powerlessness, as for every voyeur, was a spur. She was sick in the head, he'd heard, and nobody quite knew why. She wanted men to come to her all the time, she wanted babies the way the others had babies, but she couldn't and that was why she was sick. His curiosity concerning her died, however, when he overheard somebody report that the girl had lost all trace of her glamour.

"She looks half dead" was the way he'd heard it put. "Drugged and dead."

After that, it was as if Arleen Farrell no longer existed, except as a beautiful vision, shedding her clothes on the edge of a silver lake. Of what that lake had done to her he cleansed his mind thoroughly.

Unfortunately the wombs of the quartet's remaining members could not cast the experience and its consequence out except as a bawling reality, which new stage in the humiliation of Palomo Grove began on April 2nd, when the first of the League of Virgins gave birth.

Howard Ralph Katz was born to his eighteen-year-old mother Trudi at 3:46 a.m., by cesarean section. He was frail, weighing a mere four pounds and two ounces when he first saw the light of the delivery room. A child, it was agreed, who resembled his mother, for which his grandparents were duly grateful given that they had no clue as to the father. Howard had Trudi's dark, deep-set eyes, and a spiral skull cap of brown hair, even at birth. Like his mother, who had also been premature, he had to fight for every breath during the first six days of his life, after which he strengthened quickly. On April 19th Trudi brought her son back to Palomo Grove, to nurse him in the place she knew best.