Taylor Markham Timeline and Summary

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• Taylor is born to Tate Markham in 1989 (Hmmm. What other Taylor do we know who was born that year?)
• Due to her mother's drug addiction, Taylor spends part of her early years living with Hannah and Jude, whom she says taught her how to love.
• Taylor spends most of her childhood constantly moving due to her mother's fear that someone is going to take Taylor away from her.
• While her mother is away one afternoon, Taylor and her friend Sam are molested by Sam's mother's boyfriend, who leads a kiddie porn ring.
• When she's eleven, shortly after the porn incident, Taylor's mother abandons her at the 7-Eleven on the Jellicoe Road. A few minutes later, Hannah drives by to pick her up and take her to the Jellicoe School.
• Taylor spends the next six years learning about the wilderness surrounding the school and the town and prepping to take over the role of Underground Community leader for the territory wars.
• Three years before the book's action begins, Taylor runs away from the school in search of her mother and links up with Jonah Griggs, who eventually betrays her by calling his school.
• She also becomes leader of Lachlan House, overseeing the younger students in her care.
• Despite much opposition, Taylor becomes head of the Underground Community.
• Taylor begins having mysterious dreams about sitting in a tree with a boy and his friend who sobs at the end of the branch.
• Hannah disappears without warning, making Taylor feel even more abandoned than ever.
• Taylor learns that Jonah Griggs is now leader of the Cadets. Ben Cassidy gets attacked because she sends him to deal with Jonah instead of handling it herself.
• Jonah, Taylor, and Santangelo land in jail together after a major fight breaks out between the factions.
• After a series of invasions and plots against each other, Jonah and Taylor call a truce.
• Taylor begins to discover more and more connections between her dreams, Hannah's manuscript, and the locations surrounding the school.
• Santangelo tells Taylor about the boy who disappeared almost twenty years before and looks exactly like her. She learns the connection between him and Hannah and Hannah's story.
• Taylor kisses Jonah at a twenty-first birthday party in town.
• Jonah tells Taylor the truth about the day she ran into him at the train station when they ran away: He was going to commit suicide, but chose not to because she showed up.
• Santangelo breaks into the police station and gets Taylor the photo of the boy who disappeared. She looks at it and becomes aware that Webb was her father.
• Taylor breaks into the Brigadier's tent and discovers even more evidence of her identity, including baby pictures of herself.
• Having learned that the territory wars were created as a game between the five, Taylor sees the opening of the Club House to the public in a new light and begins to value her friendships with Santangelo and Jonah.
• Jonah gives Taylor a photo of the five. Seeing a picture of her mother as a young woman makes Taylor even more determined to find her.
• Jonah and Taylor travel to Sydney in search of her mother.
• Taylor meets Sam, a childhood friend who helps her remember her traumatic past.
• Jonah and Taylor learn that her mother was signed out of a hospice and that Hannah has been caring for her for the past month as she approaches her final days.
• Jonah connects the dots for Taylor and reveals that the Brigadier is Jude Scanlon, one of the five.
• On her return to Jellicoe, Taylor discovers her House is burning down. She passes out and has a vision where Webb and Fitz tell her about the tunnel the five built for the territory wars.
• It turns out that Taylor actually had a near death experience due to the smoke from the fire and her asthma. She awakens knowing how to save Chloe and Jessa, who are unaccounted for and expected to have gone into the tunnel.
• To Taylor's relief, Jonah and Santangelo rescue Chloe and Jessa.
• Jude brings Taylor's mother back to Hannah's house on the river to spend her final weeks. Taylor forges a bond with her and her new family around their stories of the past.
• Taylor's mother dies of cancer and the dreams of the boy in the tree stop.
• Hannah, Taylor, Jude, and Taylor's new friends travel to the beach to finish the journey Webb and Hannah's family began decades before.