Timeline
- Matt, a young boy, lives in a house in a poppy field with a woman who acts like his mother named Celia (Farmer 5).
- Kids appear at the house when Celia is gone at work. They try to get Matt to come out, but he can’t. When they are leaving, Matt breaks the window and jumps out, but he lands on broken glass, which cuts his foot and he is then rushed to the hospital. (15-18).
- Matt is taken to the Alacran Estate, where servants take the glass out of his foot and heal him. Then he is thrown into a cell. He also learns that he is a clone but he does not understand what that means (21-28).
- Matt meets a girl named Maria who brings him food and entertains him. Matt makes her mad and she is taken out of the cell in which Matt lives, at dawn (29-35).
- Matt's caretaker, Rosa, gets furious at Matt one day and fills his cell with sawdust for deep litter (41-42).
- Matt meets an old man named El Patron. Matt is El Patron's clone. When El Patron learns how how poorly Matt has been cared for, Willum (the house doctor) gets Rosa in trouble and she is taken away (54-56).
- After meeting El Patron, Matt is allowed to live with Celia instead of the cell filled with deep litter (58-60).
- El Patron gives Matt the option to choose one of two bodyguards. Matt chooses a big man named Tam Lin to be his bodyguard (63-64).
- Matt gets a private teacher who visits him for lessons. He eventually gets annoyed by doing the same thing every day and snaps and screams at her. This is the first time he has spoken since he was released from the cell (73).
- Matt and Tam Lin go on a picnic and they see a dead body in the middle of a field. Matt does not understand why the man is dead (77-78).
- Matt is listening to Felicia play on the piano and he has to hide when she comes into the room. He hides in a closet and finds a secret passage. In the passage, Matt can see many peepholes and entrances into rooms all around the house (86-88).
- Maria loses her dog, Furball, and Tom “finds” him drowning in the toilet, but he's still alive (94-96).
- At his birthday party, Matt tells Maria that he thinks Tom put Furball in the toilet. He moves Tom to the kid table and Maria next to him. Maria gets mad but is forced to sit next to Matt (102-105). Matt is given gifts and Maria tries to take back her gift, but Matt does not allow it. When she finally gives it to him he demands a kiss and Maria is forced to give him one (108-110).
- Matt and Maria are tricked to go to the hospital by Tom and Felicia. When they arrive, Tom leads them to a room that has a person on the bed (MacGregor’s clone.) The clone is thrashing around and screaming on the bed as the children look at it (113-121).
- Matt decides to take Furball and write Maria and ransom note. He gets Furball and then takes him to the Lotus Pond. Then he gets picked up and is talked to by Senator Mendoza, Maria’s dad. Furball ends up getting poisoned and Matt is accused of killing him (126-135).
- El Viejo dies and Matt has to dress up to go to the funeral with Celia. When they arrive, Matt sees that Maria is there. He sees Tam Lin pushing El Patron in a wheelchair. When they are going to say their goodbyes, Matt is pulled out of the line by the priest and is called an animal. Maria backs him up and takes him away to the music room to talk to him. Maria says that she has forgiven him. They hear voices so they rush into the secret passage (150-155).
- Matt and Maria find themselves in a room full of computer screens. They hear people coming so they go back into the secret passage. They spy on who went into the room and see it was Tom and Felicia. Felicia tells Tom that she killed Furball, and Matt and Maria hear her. They walk down the passage and see Tam Lin coming toward them. Maria tells him about what they heard. Tam Lin takes her out of the passage and Matt is left alone (157-165).
- Matt learns that waste is dumped in the wastelands and decides to go over to them. He finds the eejits' homes there. His horse suddenly collapses and falls into a pit and Matt can’t breathe. He is pulled out by Farm Patrol officers who tell him that Tam Lin is a terrorist (171-177).
- Matt gets woken up by Celia, told to get dressed, and is rushed out of the house. He learns that El Patron had a heart attack and then Matt vomits and faints. Matt wakes up in the hospital and Tam Lin was there. He tells Tam Lin about how he went to the wasteland and what he saw (178-182).
- Matt learns how El Patron kept getting better and lived to be as old as he is. He gets organ transplants from his clones. Matt believes that he was not created for transplants (190-192)
- Matt reads about the history of Opium when he realizes that the author is Maria’s mom, Esperanza Mendoza. She must not have known about her mother living in Aztlan and being a famous author (196-198).
- El Patron has started calling Matt "Felipe" (his deceased son) and talking about distant memories. This tells Matt that he is probably ready for more fetal brain implants (199-202).
- El Patron has a heart attack in the middle of Steven and Emilia's wedding and collapses to the floor. Tam Lin picks him up and takes him away quickly (212-214).
- Maria takes Matt to a hovercraft and Matt pretends to be an eejit that Maria had taken possession of, but Matt gets discovered by Emilia and taken away to the hospital (222-227).
- Matt is taken into a room where El Patron and Celia are. El Patron talks about how he deserves more lives, but Celia disagrees. Celia admits that she poisoned Matt so he wouldn't be a suitable donor for organ transplants. El Patron is then taken out of the room and Celia is dragged out by two guards (231-237).
- Tam Lin takes Matt away to an Oasis, acting like he wasn't on Matt’s side. Once they arrived, Tam Lin gave Matt supplies and money and told him to go to Aztlan to talk to Maria’s mother. Then he leaves Matt to go on his mission (240-247).
- Matt waits at the Aztlan border waiting for an opportunity to make it over the border. At one point many people from there start running across the border and Matt uses this opportunity to run over to Aztlan. Somebody from the border patrol chases him but he only gets a hold of Matt's backpack. After crossing the border, Matt meets some people who feed him and talk to him (256-262).
- Matt is led into a room full of boys who are assembling various products. One of the boys gets in trouble with a Keeper for sanding a piece of wood when he should have been working. When the Keeper leaves the room Matt makes friends with boys named Chacho and Fidelito (263-268).
- Matt and his two new friends are shipped off to the plankton factory where they meet some new keepers. One Keeper, Carlos, shows them around and tells them the importance of plankton (278-282).
- A Keeper named Jorge teaches them about good habits. At one point, he asks Matt a question and Matt gets it wrong. All the boys confess to something but Matt doesn't. Then they all start to accuse Matt for doing things (289-293).
- Matt and Chacho notice something in the distance and go towards it. They find that it is a pit full of bones. In the pit, they see a human skull and that the bones were all carefully balanced, so they go back instead of investigating further (296-297).
- A boy named Ton-Ton is accused of stealing something from the Keepers and is beaten by Jorge. Jorge asks Matt if he had any confessions to make but Matt said he didn't. Fidelito tries to help Matt, but Jorge decides to beat him, so Matt confessed and gets beaten instead (299-305).
- Jorge figures that if he punishes Fidelito, then Matt will finally listen to him. When Jorge is about to strike Fidelito, Matt and Chacho start beating Jorge up. All of the Keepers barge in and try to take control of the situation, but they are surrounded by all the boys. Then Jorge tells them that Matt is from "Dreamland" (Opium) and they stop defending him. The keepers take Matt and Chacho to a closet and leave them there (317-323).
- Matt and Chacho are thrown into the boneyard. Matt eventually gets his restraints off, and after a long time he gets out of the trench. He tries to communicate with Chacho but he won't answer. Eventually, Matt hears Chacho snoring which tells him that he is alive (324-333).
- Ton-Ton shows up with Fidelito inside the shrimp harvester. They get Chacho out of the boneyard, using the shrimp harvester, and they find that he is alive (336-338).
- When the boys reach Azltan, Fidelito and Matt go ahead of Ton-Ton and Chacho. During their journey, Matt has an asthma attack. Fidelito tries to help but he can’t so he runs to find someone to help him. Later, Matt wakes up to some people helping him (347-348).
- Matt and Fidelito walk into a hospital and are taken to where Chacho is. When they get there, they see Jorge and Carlos near Chacho. They begin to fight but then Maria’s mother appears and sorts things out. After everything is calmed down, Maria appears and hugs Matt (358-362).
- Maria’s mother talks to Matt and tells him that Opium is on total lockdown and that El Patron is dead. She tells Matt that he is the new leader of Opium because he is a copy of El Patron which allows him to take his place (364-367).
- Matt returns to Opium and finds that almost everybody who used to work at the Alacran Estate is dead. At the party celebrating El Patron’s death, the wine was poisoned, so everyone who drank it, including Tam Lin, died (369-377).
- Matt decides that he is going to fix Opium and get rid of the corruption in it with the help of his friends and allies (380).
Bibliography
Farmer, Nancy. The House of the Scorpion. New York: Atheneum for Young Readers, 2002. Print.
Made by Braedon W.