If Only

By Becky Citra

Fifteen-year-old Pam is assaulted when she and her twin brother, Danny, are walking home through the woods. Danny is frozen with fear and does nothing; luckily, Pam is rescued by a woman out walking her dog. Pam deals with the trauma by isolating herself while Danny struggles with the shame of not protecting his sister. His shame is compounded by their father's contempt, and Danny decides to redeem himself by finding Pam's attacker. In the process, he discovers a family secret, and Pam connects with new friends who help her regain her confidence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781459802889

Becky Citra

Becky Citra is the author of over twenty books, ranging from early chapter books to novels for young adults. She was an elementary school teacher for over twenty-five years and began writing for children in 1995. Becky's books have been shortlisted for and won many awards, including the Red Cedar Award, the Diamond Willow, the Silver Birch and the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize. She lives in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

Book preview

Janet

Danny

Dad’s going to kill you if he finds out, Danny says.

His twin sister, Pam, wiggles her arms out of her jacket and wads it into a ball. She stuffs it at the end of the seat in the booth and picks up a blue sports bag from the table. Who cares? Besides, Danny, who’s going to tell him? You?

Danny shrugs. He slides onto the opposite seat. Pam is just saying that to bug him. She knows he will never tell.

The whole idea is stupid. Pam looks perfectly fine in her jeans and sweater. He doesn’t understand what her problem is. But all he says is, I’ll order for you while you’re changing. What do you want?

A chocolate milkshake, Pam says.

Then she is gone, the door of the women’s washroom swinging shut behind her.

She takes ages. Danny orders fries and a Coke for himself and the chocolate milkshake for Pam. While he waits for the order, he peers through the steamy, rain-streaked window, watching for Hugh. You can count on Hugh to be late. He’ll come flying in with some excuse about all the chores he had to do.

Danny has saved up his allowance for weeks, and he isn’t going to miss Planet of the Apes. This is its last week. It’s Thursday, and school is closed for the day because of a problem with the plumbing.

He drains his Coke. They don’t have a lot of time, and Pam always takes forever to drink a milkshake, complaining that drinking it fast gives her an ice-cream headache. The bus that will take them downtown is the number fifty-two, and there is one due in ten minutes. That will get them to the movie theater fifteen minutes before the matinee begins. Danny frowns. Pam better hurry. And where is Hugh?

A minute later, Hugh bursts into the café, using a corner of his shirt to wipe raindrops off his round, wire-rimmed glasses. He plunks down opposite Danny and grabs a fry. Sorry, Danny. Had to help my dad clean up the garage.

He helps himself to another fry, and Danny grumbles, Buy your own.

What is Pam doing? Danny’s eyes flicker to the washroom door. A woman with a toddler comes out, followed by Pam. Danny’s stomach drops.

Pam is wearing a lime-green miniskirt and a black blouse. Her jeans spill out of the top of the sports bag, which she is hugging to her chest. Even across the room, Danny can see that she has put on makeup—a wobbly line of pink lipstick, mascara and blue stuff around her eyes.

Holy cow, Hugh says.

Pam stumbles up to the table. She has changed her runners for a pair of white sandals with heels. Ta-da! she says. What do you think?

Danny thinks that she doesn’t look like his twin sister anymore. The real Pam, with her narrow freckled face that is a perfect match to his, has disappeared under the lipstick and blue eye shadow.

Well? Pam says.

You’ll have to get your milkshake to go. The bus is going to be here any second. Danny stands up. Let’s go.

Pam sits by herself on the bus, three rows ahead of Hugh and Danny. Her long brown hair, sparkling with raindrops, hangs over the back of the seat. Pam’s hair is almost long enough for her to sit on.

Where did she get the clothes? Hugh says.

Stacey lent them to her, Danny says. The shoes are hers though. She bought them at a thrift store.

He doesn’t want to talk about it. Stacey is the leader of a group of girls who mostly wear miniskirts and fishnet stockings and take up one whole table in the school cafeteria, talking in loud voices about all the parties they go to. Danny has watched Pam the last month—at the edge of the group, not really in and not really out. And then suddenly Stacey noticed her, saving a seat for her at lunch and now lending her these stupid clothes.

Your dad will kill her, Hugh says.

Hugh is afraid of Danny’s dad. Danny has told him a few things that Hugh said made the back of his neck prickle. Danny would have taken them back, but it was too late.

He won’t find out, Danny says.

The rain has stopped by the time the movie is over. Hugh’s mother picks Hugh up in front of the theater to take him to a dentist appointment. She waves through the car window and beeps the horn three times as she pulls away from the curb. Danny waves back and then peers up the street for the bus. Pam is shivering beside him, her bare arms and legs prickled with goose bumps.

Why don’t you put your jacket on? he says.

I’m not cold, Pam says.

Danny grins. Yeah, right. You just want everyone to see your cool clothes.

So what if I do? Pam glances down at the green miniskirt. I’m tired of looking like a dork just because Dad’s got a problem. Just for once I want to look good.

The bus is crowded, and Danny has to stand. When they get off in front of the café, Pam says, I’m not going to change yet. I’m going to wait until we get home.

Danny stares at his sister. Are you crazy?

I have to give these clothes back to Stacey tomorrow, Pam says. "I just want to wear them a bit longer. I’ll change in the Jolly Roger."

The Jolly Roger is the name Pam gave to the tree fort at the bottom of their backyard. Danny discovered it last July, the first night they moved into the house. At first he thought it was a real boat perched in the branches of a huge leafy tree. It had a wooden deck and a cabin with portholes and a tattered flag with a skull and crossbones hanging from a mast.

Danny and Pam hung out in the fort for the rest of the summer, reading and playing Monopoly and even sleeping there a few times. Sometimes, when Danny lies on his back and looks out a porthole at the green leaves and blue sky, he imagines that he’s back on his grandparents’ farm in the Fraser Valley. They lived on the farm for five years, and it was the only place that ever felt like home. Before that, they lived in Sudbury, in Ontario, but that seems like a lifetime ago to Danny.

Danny thinks the Jolly Roger is the only good thing about moving away from the farm to a suburb closer to Vancouver. But since they started at the new high school in September, Pam has lost interest in the fort. She tried to explain why when Danny complained. "Get with it, Danny. We’re in grade ten."

Pam is prattling on now about how she can change in the fort and Dad will never know and how she wishes more than anything that she had her own miniskirt and how there is no point in trying to save her money for one because Dad will never let her wear it. It’s irritating. Danny was going to offer to carry her sports bag, but he changes his mind. He walks quickly, knowing Pam is having trouble keeping up in her wobbly, high-heeled sandals. He knows he’s being mean, but she is really bugging him.

They walk for four blocks, leaving the stores behind, and then turn between two houses onto an old railroad track. The actual track was pulled up years ago, leaving a wide trail that runs for twenty miles through a mix of neighborhoods, some shabby and some rich, and a few remaining patches of forest. Every once in a while, workers from the municipality pick up empty soda bottles, food wrappers and other bits of garbage. Mostly the trail is deserted except for weekend dog walkers and people taking shortcuts home.

It is deserted today. Even though it has stopped raining, Danny can feel the moisture in the air, like a fine cold mist on his cheeks. The sky is a dull leaden gray, and it seems darker than it should be for four o’clock. The trail runs behind the backyards of the houses, some with high wooden fences and some with chain-link fences that let you see into the yards. Today there is nobody outside.

What are you going to do about your makeup? Danny says. How are you going to get that off in the fort?

He can tell that Pam hasn’t thought of that. She frowns but doesn’t say anything.

You’re not allowed to wear makeup, Danny points out.

"I know that," Pam says.

I guess I could get you a wet towel or something, Danny says.

Pam lights up. Thanks, Danny.

Danny has always envied the way nothing ever seems to worry his twin for very long. He glances sideways at Pam and realizes it isn’t true anymore. Ever since they started grade ten, Pam has worried a lot about friends.

Let’s see if Prince is home. Pam leaves the trail and walks through a strip of tall weeds to a chain-link fence that encloses the backyard of a white duplex. She presses up against the fence and calls, Hey, Prince!

After a second’s hesitation, Danny joins her. To his relief, no demented German shepherd lunges at the fence, barking his head off. The first time that had happened, sometime last fall, he leaped back with a shout, and Pam laughed so hard she almost fell down.

He’s wagging his tail, dummy! she had crowed. To Danny’s horror, she’d stuck her fingers through a hole in the fence and touched the dog’s nose. You’re just a big softie, aren’t you?

Pam had spotted Prince’s name painted above the opening to a large wooden doghouse on one side of the yard. Since then, every time they go past the duplex, Pam insists on stopping to talk to Prince.

They’ve only seen the dog’s owner once, a tall woman with red hair who’d been pulling dead plants out of a clay pot and had glanced up and smiled at them. But sometimes the window or the door on her side of the duplex is open, and they can hear music playing. The other half of the duplex looks the same every day, with orange curtains pulled shut across the window. Danny is pretty sure nobody lives there.

His owner must have taken him for a walk or something, Pam says now, disappointed.

Come on, Danny says. Let’s go.

The houses end and the trail narrows and enters a wooded area. This is Danny’s favorite part of the trail. He knows it isn’t a real forest, not like at the farm, and that the houses start again just around the corner. He explored once, walking into the evergreens as far as he could, and discovered that it was really only a wide band of tall trees that ended at some mossy wooden fences. But it has a little bit of the same feel and smell as a real forest. Wet earth and new leaves and patches of green light flickering through branches.

Pam stumbles twice in her sandals.

Wait up, she says. I’m going to change into my runners.

She zips open the sports bag and takes out her runners. She slips off a sandal and balances on one foot, trying not to step on the soggy ground.

Danny picks up a stick and whacks it against a tree trunk.

Thwack! Thwack!

Later, Danny thinks that if he hadn’t been making so much noise, everything would have been different.

The problem is, he doesn’t hear the guy coming. He just senses a sudden movement from behind and then someone grips his arm, hard. So hard that he gasps in pain.

He twists and glimpses a green jacket and a face, covered in some kind of black material with two eye holes and a mouth hole rimmed with red. A monster face. The blade of a knife flashes. Danny is dragged off the trail, into the woods. He stumbles over roots; branches swipe his face. He’s shoved against the trunk of a tree.

Put your arms around the tree and don’t move, a deep voice growls. You got that? You stay here and no one will get hurt.

The knife blade gleams. Danny’s legs collapse underneath him. He clings to the tree trunk and presses his face against the bark. His heart is going to explode right out of his chest.

He tries to yell, Run, Pam! but he can’t make the words come out.

Reviews for If Only

[amandacharland_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a story about twins who experience an assault very differently. It divides them as they struggle to cope and face emotions of regret and guilt. The plot needs some work. There are many loose ends that never get tidied up. Readers can usually handle a detail or two, but there are far too many characters and smaller events that seem to hold no purpose. I'm reviewing this book after receiving an advanced reader's copy.

[stornelli-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pam and Danny are twins living with their widowed dad. They are attacked on a trail behind their home and spooked by it. While Pam befriends Carol who helps her cope and takes on a "mother" role, Danny cleverly becomes a detective and helps police solve the crime and arrest the assailant.

[jrlibrary · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Problems contained in this book were solved much too easily, and the ending happened much too fast.

[68papyrus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If Only takes place in the spring of 1968. Danny and Pam are twin tenth graders who are being raised by their father. When Pam is assaulted while taking a shortcut home along a wooded path, Danny is too terrified to fend off her attacker. The book details Pam's struggle with coming to terms with the assault and being able to move forward with her lite. I enjoyed the book but thought it would have made more impact if everything wasn't resolved so easily. All the loose ends were tied up and all the problems were resolved which doesn't always happen in real life. I also would have liked more character development which would have added more depth to the story. Overall, If Only was an interesting read but it fell a bit short of my expectations. 3.5 stars.

[monicalynn-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Danny and Pam are twins who live with their father. The recently moved to a new town from their grandparents farm after their grandmother passing and their grandfather having to go into a home. Their father is off of work due to an injury and is not so with it all the time. Danny and Pam try to care for each other. One day while taking a short cut through the woods where they always walk. Danny and Pam are attacked, especially Pam, who is somewhat injured. Danny didn't feel he could do anything therefore, he feels guilty for not protecting his sister. Carol a neighbor came by with her dog Prince and scared off the attacker so luckily Pam is not raped just bruised and traumatized as is Danny for not protecting his sister.The story continues with their accounts of what happened, their trials of dealing with what happened. People talking about them. The meanness of teenagers and bullies at school and also figuring out who is actually responsible and not feeling like one of them should have done something more to protect each other. Their Dad comes around and works on getting a little better dealing with things too. A good moral story.

[shelleydaugherty · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Twins are supposed to be bonded like no other people. But Danny and Pam have a chance encounter with danger one night; it seems they may be divided forever. Walking home after a movie, Danny has someone hold a knife to him and then they turn and attack his sister. Though Pam survives the attack with minor physical injuries, she has plenty of mental ones left to deal with, and so does Danny.The guilt they both feel over the event leaves them feeling divided. Danny feels there is more he should have done to protect Pam and he feels ashamed. Pam can’t help but feel if she had dressed differently or if she had acted some other way, that she would not have been a victim that night. Pam refuses to go to school for weeks, and she notices that not one of her “friends” has tried to see if she was okay. The more Danny and Pam are drawn into themselves the further they get from ever being close again.This book really examines an attack from multiple points of view. Sometimes victims have a hard time understanding they are not the only ones affected by the attack and many times they are not the only victim. In this story, the brother is just as much a victim because of what happened to his sister and what part he had to play in that event. When you go farther into the family history, you find the attack even affects their father from memories in his past. But through the hardship, this family just might find a way to come out better than they were before. A very moving and enlightening story about survival and family.

[lavermeer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered outside a hotel room. Across the continent, a girl is attacked on her way home from school while her twin cowers. Through the contrasts of history, a troubled story is set in motion.As its title suggests, IF ONLY is a story about struggling with regret and forgiveness. Danny wonders what he might have done differently on the day of the attack and how he might redeem himself in his sister's eyes. Pam wonders how she can face her peers and whether she somehow brought the attack on herself. Their injured, out-of-work father seems more inclined to blame them for the attack than to understand their fears, but he too is trying to escape a haunted past. Over several weeks, the twins, their friends, and their families learn to accept what's happened and move forward, as new experiences help Pam and Danny build a wider context for understanding their increasingly adult world.There are quite a few loose threads at the end of the novel. The social studies teacher who refers to Martin Luther King Jr.'s death never walks on again, the classmate who embarrasses Pam and is then embarrassed in turn disappears, and Danny's vandalism has no follow-up once he starts spending lunch hours in the library. The nasty cleaning women whose daughter spreads terrible rumours about Pam doesn't return to the text, and Hugh's brother Martin and his commune-living hippie friends seem to arrive only to provide Sixties colour. We also never learn why the neighbour, Carol, takes such an interest in Pam's recovery. Similarly, readers may observe many broken, forgotten, or missing objects — such as Pop's World War One medals, the family television, Pam's jigsaw puzzle, and the model plane — being raised but not resolved: an invitation to explicate the text, or just stray details? Then again, in a book whose major theme is that lives are full of secrets, perhaps readers can use these loose threads to extend the narrative in their own imaginations.The novel does have some intriguing elements. The friendship between Pam and Billie is initially unlikely but eventually feels settled enough to be real. The effect men's violence has on men, as well as on their sisters and daughters, is considered. And women's hair — Pam's hair in particular — becomes a potent, although somewhat problematic, symbol of female self-determination. On balance, though, the novel's pacing is uneven, and the narrative concentration is by turns suffocatingly focussed then too scattered to draw together the numerous subplot matters and story details. Readers may also find the sudden ending too pat: more like a children's novel than a contemporary YA novel. Still, Citra develops sufficient complexity that close readers are likely to want to discuss the book after reading it, and the setting will allow readers to imagine this violence at a comfortable, yet still identifiable, distance.I found this novel an imperfect but still worthwhile reading experience.