Character Analysis
Taylor's childhood friend, Sam, is the key to solving the mystery of what's happened to Tate. The child of her mom's neighbor, Eve, Sam and Taylor were thrown together a lot while their mothers did drugs and ran around with their boyfriends. According to Taylor, Sam's mom "lived totally for the guy she was with and Sam was the number twelve priority in her life" (23.42). And take it from Sam—when your mom dumps you with various people while she satisfies her own desires, nothing good can happen.
And yet Sam and Taylor managed to form a relationship as children that helped them cope with life, doing things like playing Superman in their apartment building or reading Harry Potter together. "I wish I was a wizard" (23.65), Sam recalls saying as they tearfully think back on the past. These kids were close. Like the Jellicoe Road five of years before, bad circumstances brought Sam and Taylor together to create the only family each other had.
Sam was also part of Taylor's traumatic experience being molested by Eve's boyfriend, a memory so paralyzing that she blocks it out after sharing it with Raffaela a few years later. We don't really know exactly what happened after Sam's mom walked in on that scene, but one thing's for sure: Tate took Taylor away to Jellicoe and Sam never saw her again.
Seeing as Sam's only, like, eight when this happens, there's no way for him to understand the truth that the sexual abuse was a wakeup call and Tate wanted to get Taylor as far away from her life as possible. Still, it speaks to the lack of stable authority figures in his life that Sam goes on believing that Tate means Taylor is dead when she tells him, "She's in heaven" (23.51). Either way, he plays a critical role in the story, acting as the bridge that leads Taylor to information about her mom.