Those Pink Mountain Nights

by Jen Ferguson

Genres: YA Coming of Age

Synopsis

Those Pink Mountain Nights has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Release date: September 12, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 352

Sample

Friday Afternoon

Calgary Herald headline: “Promising” Indigenous Teen Reported Missing First Week of School

BERLIN

No one had noticed her new cat-eye glasses, bright red, with very faux diamonds spread across the rise like perfectly positioned stars. Not a single person had said a thing. All morning long. And now the other members of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Student Association—the FNMISA for short—were too busy arguing about their upcoming fundraiser to notice that Berlin wasn’t fully present. She sat at a desk, her body oriented toward the circle, tracing a rough sketch of a pipe on the grimy surface with her finger.

“But should we really be calling them Indian tacos?” Darcie asked, then promptly took a bite of her bologna sandwich.

She was a year younger, Métis from Lac Ste. Anne, whereas Berlin’s family was from Treaty 1 and the Red River region. Berlin had recruited Darcie for the FNMISA. It was lunchtime. They were meeting in Mr. MacDonald’s classroom. They used to meet in the library, but nobody was allowed to eat in the library. When Mr. MacDonald’s offer of space came with a co-conspiratorial wink and a reminder that he didn’t enforce silly rules like no food in his space, the vote had been unanimous.

Across the circle of desks, SarahLynn exhaled loudly. The stage-worthy exclamation ruffled her bangs. “If you’re arguing for calling them Îyârhe Nakoda tacos, I’ll take it. For my people, for my Nation. But I don’t think you are. So what exactly are you arguing for? Navajo tacos? Or like Indigenous tacos? If you say FNMI tacos, I’m going to cry. Literally. And if I cry, I’m going to eff up my mascara, and if I eff up my mascara, I’m going to give up on life today. Do you want to shoulder that burden, Darce?”

A bit over-the-top but it fit. If Berlin could cry, she’d probably be crying too. Out of frustration. They had this discussion at least twice a semester. Once, she cared.

“Can we not?” Vincent wasn’t eating. An unopened can of Coke sat on the desk in front of him. “It’s way important to get this fundraiser going and not important to worry about the words.”

He wore his hair in braids and was the only guy in FNMISA. His family was from the Piikani Nation. He was also the only other member who had firsthand experience with missing and murdered women. He’d been part of the National Inquiry when he was a kid, telling stories about his mom. That is, he’d been the only other member with firsthand experience until five months ago, when Kiki disappeared. Seemingly without a trace. The first week of school she’d been alongside them in the library skipping out on lunch, working on drafting a non-cringe-inducing land acknowledgment for the AAA hockey home games, and the next she wasn’t.

They all missed Kiki.

No one glanced over to the faded National Poetry Month setup on the back wall. No one needed to reread Kiki’s winning poem from last year. It had been an elegy for the missing and murdered, for her mother, for all of them. Now it read like a foretelling.

Even though Berlin was unable to cry and beyond consumed with that famous pipe they’d talked about in French class last semester, she knew that this fundraiser mattered too much to be obsessing over words. The organization was local and Indigenous-owned, and they needed a boost if they were going to offer their self-defense program for youth again.

Darcie covered her mouth with a hand so she could keep talking and chewing. “But we didn’t come to consensus. Not last time. Or the one before that.”

This was where Berlin should weigh in.

Last year when they’d had this discussion, Kiki had been wearing her go-to neon pink legwarmers layered maximalist-style against big patterns. She’d said something sharp and funny, and in such a kind way that they’d moved on. She’d gotten them thinking beyond the words. But as much as Berlin tried, she couldn’t remember exactly how, and even if she could, Berlin couldn’t do it like Kiki.

The group fell silent. They ate, attempting not to make a mess. After all, they could lose this privilege. And skipping lunch weekly so they had time to meet around class schedules and after-school obligations was not fun.

Even if Berlin wasn’t hungry these days, she knew that.

SarahLynn’s older sister, Tashie, who exclusively wore the color black and was their unofficial leader, cleared her throat. “Vincent is right, yo. We’re sticking with Indian tacos. We have too much to get done to have this thing up and running before March break to get stuck all up in here.”

The school needed to assign a president, VP, and treasurer to every student group. And while FNMISA was a mouthful, it, too, was what the school insisted upon. To meet Canadian standards. They didn’t have an Inuk member yet, but Tashie was ever hopeful.

“Okay, so like ten bucks for a taco. And a toonie for pop,” SarahLynn suggested.

Vincent finally cracked open his Coke. “We should up it a bit.”

This was where having a treasurer would help. Someone to figure the monies. That had been Kiki’s role.

Even after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had stopped looking, after the missing posters were torn down, the school hadn’t pressured them to fill the treasurer spot. Everything was on pause, as if waiting for Kiki Cheyanne Sound to show up and for life to start again around her. At school, it was obvious. Where she was missing. At community events too.

As VP, Berlin could do both jobs. At least the tracking-expenses part, she could do that.

Vincent continued, talking slow: “Say we add in dessert. Go full-on combo. If Berlin can get a donation of supplies, flour and sugar and shit, from Alpine Natural Foods & Chinese Grocery again, I’ll make butter tarts—with raisins. I say we aim to get everyone to spend fifteen.”

If . . .

It would be a challenge. Berlin nodded her consent anyhow. They needed her to do this, no matter how complicated it would be. She’d figure things, like she always did. If they wanted to ask the art club to design a poster, they needed to sort the details out fast. Mr. MacDonald’s countdown at the top corner of his dry-erase board made her anxious: 20 weeks left! Including March break! A weird sketch of a yellow-haired man with visible abdominals wore nothing but swim shorts and held a surfboard.

While the FNMISA assembled a detailed grocery list, Berlin continued half-heartedly tracing that famous pipe on her desk, as if by doing so, she’d understand it. Solve for x. Find the lost piece of the puzzle. Remember how to cry, or laugh, or even feel hunger.

Hours later, the heavy exit door by the gym clicked shut and Berlin’s glasses fogged up. She placed one mukluk on the iced sidewalk, refusing to glance backward. She’d never cut classes before.

Not once.

Not that escaping a few minutes early was technically cutting. And she only cared in a faint cerebral way that she was breaking the rules. A girl had to do what a girl had to do. More often than not. In this ever-spinning world.

It was something Quinta, her best friend since kindergarten, said all the time. Only, these days, she wasn’t saying it to Berlin.

Red mittens rubbed against the wool of her coat, cutting into the careful quiet. It wasn’t 100 percent silent. The silence was a metaphor. It was lush velvet, and the people, the birds, the predators, all that noise, they were beads stitched onto its surface.

Before the silence, there had been music. At least Berlin thought there had been something else.

It was hard to remember.

She sighed.

She hated sighing. It sounded too much like giving up.

Now, almost to the stoplight, she’d successfully avoided another awkward run-in at the lockers. School would be out soon. And like Berlin had done since the first day of winter break, when her very best friend had “asked for space,” she remembered every little thing about them, searching for the moment where she’d effed up enough to crush a lifelong friendship. Even before Quinta got her driver’s permit and the Jeep, it had been routine: they went everywhere together. Before winter break, they’d worked the same shifts at Pink Mountain Pizza too. Quinta was Bee’s ride. Literally and figuratively.

Now Berlin walked.

The release bell sounded with an off note, like someone in the office had yanked a power cord from the wall. It fit her mood. Her forever mood these days. She couldn’t look at health foods or Quinta’s sunny, painted beehive boxes or 4x4 Jeeps, purple or otherwise, the same way. Even geography was ruined. Maps of the world too. The whole alphabet. Because they weren’t Quinta and Bee any longer, brought together by their place names and united by what Berlin had thought were unbreakable bonds.

On the street, a vehicle slammed on its brakes, gliding over the thick white line. She peered up, eyes hard, both hoping and not hoping it was her best friend. After all, she now had to ask if Quinta’s parents would donate a bunch of baking essentials for the fundraiser. She really had to do it.

“Heeey, Berliner, want a lift? It’s cold, woman. You’re gonna freeze your tits off.”

She and Jones weren’t friends. They’d been in the same homeroom class since forever, and these days, he only half-heartedly teased her over her weird name. This from someone named John Jack Jones III.

She distanced herself from the truck, its rank weed and greasy-boy smells, and pointed toward Ninth Street. “Work tonight.”

“Oh shit, wish I could.” Jones leaned toward her conspiratorially, sliding on the bench. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt. “I’m in deep trouble with the overlords.”

“Again?”

Earnest Berlin didn’t talk like this. If she’d been able to talk like this at lunch, and if SarahLynn hadn’t crushed her, they’d have gotten to the grocery list sooner. Maybe Berlin could have even told someone else to deal with the donation request.

“You’re lucky.” Jones laughed, on a slight delay, leaning hard toward the passenger window. He was high. “Yours are hardly home.”

His mom had an unhealthy obsession with her only child. Berlin was pretty sure Mrs. Jones had her son’s cell tapped. Jones Senior was RCMP. They’d have access.

Someone in the line of vehicles honked once, twice, then laid down a long angry note. The light was green. Behind the small two-door car making all that noise sat a purple Jeep.

“You’d better get,” Berlin said.

Green light and all, Jones stalled. “I’m ordering tonight. You’ll make it with extra cheese, right? Like a bucketload. Don’t skimp! For me? That Sound chick used to do it.” He smiled as if that would cinch things.

The car honked again.

Before she could respond, Jones took off, his window still down, the smells still leaking out. It was like he hadn’t been asking for a favor at all. First, he’d tried to charm her. Then followed that weak attempt with a comment about Kiki, like it would cement things. Stepping out into the intersection, Berlin lifted a mitten as the purple Jeep passed.

But Quintana-Roo, her hair loose and coppery, fixed her eyes on the road.

She thought her legal name beyond ridiculous. Some real settler BS. Blamed her white hippie mom for the screwup and her Chinese Canadian dad for being a pushover. Quinta had even worked some administrative magic in the principal’s office and had wiped it from the attendance rolls.

On the day she’d rent Berlin’s world in half, Quinta had said what she needed to say, calm and collected. But it seemed any acknowledgment of each other’s basic humanity was off the grid.

For how long?

To finish crossing the road before the light turned, Berlin walked faster, losing traction with each step under the weight of her schoolbag. It wasn’t that she wanted to fall—but that might be enough reason for her best friend to pull over, for the two of them to talk, to figure out what went wrong. To make it better.

Or Berlin could just text, inquire about the baking supplies and hope that would connect them again.

She should do it now. While she felt this almost-motivation.

Only it mattered that her phone would have some juice left for tonight’s walk home. Even in a quirky tourist town, street harassment was a thing. News tickers at the bottom of the TVs on campus and the hard-copy newspaper her parents subscribed to but never had time to read both said violent crime was getting worse. Housing prices were skyrocketing too. Minimum wage couldn’t compete. The numbers told a story. But no one counted the near misses, how last week, after closing the shop, Berlin was followed almost all the way to her house by three drunk white men, her phone about as useful as a doorstop.

Not that she would have called the cops. The RCMP claimed otherwise, but they weren’t looking out for people like Berlin. For people like Kiki and Kiki’s mom.

If Berlin’s phone had worked, if she’d been able to borrow a charger from her least favorite coworker without suffering public humiliation, she kept telling herself that her best friend would have answered, even though they weren’t talking, and she’d have faked a conversation long enough for the men to realize they hadn’t found an easy target.

Instead, dignity intact, Berlin had outsmarted the drunks, slipped into a neighbor’s fenced-in yard and waited, pressed against that sleeping house, nails clawing through mittens into her red phone case.

Her small inner voice said maybe the best thing to happen that night was that she hadn’t called Quinta. Hadn’t tested if they could fix what had unknowably gone wrong between them. Relief, in a way. But Berlin hated walking around, that sharp French Revolution guillotine hovering, waiting, ready to drop. It was primed. And Quinta held the release trigger.

The purple Jeep long gone now, Berlin’s maddening obsession returned. It was like if she could figure out its riddle, she’d figure out friendship too.

But maybe the painting lied. Maybe it wasn’t something more. Maybe it was only a pipe after all. And if that was fact, Berlin worried what it meant for her and Quintana-Roo.

JESSIE

Long and wildly curly, Jessie’s mop was a mega mess. With free period last, she should have gone to the big old family house and bathed herself. Maybe even resurrected the straightener from that middle school phase. Ha. When piglets grow their wings. Finger-combing her hair, yanking on knots, her leased Land Rover idling in the tiny parking lot that curved around Pink Mountain Pizza’s corner storefront, Jessie laughed.

Her first shift. Her first job.

And it was a solid one. A real two-four-K-gold one. Something to be proud of. Not that her parents got it. Had even tried. Or ever would. To them, Jessie was a fairy child, snuck into their home after that first scary overnight hospital stay while their real daughter was eaten by the sharp-toothed fae. She was a broken fairy child at that. Nowhere near a perfect girl, in body thanks to one of the late effects of childhood cancer treatment, or in what her parents thought should be comportment. With cancer, the treatments could be as bad as the disease. You had to destroy good cells to smash the bad. After all that chemo, Jessie couldn’t ever pass for a Disney Princess when their one job was to marry young and breed. It was why she preferred fairy tales—the gritty, gory ones where toes were chopped off, where Bluebeard’s latest wife divorced his murdering behind and saved the day—to Disney in most things. But that didn’t mean that Jessie couldn’t enjoy a straight shot of high-fructose corn syrup on occasion too.

She contained multitudes. Even if her ovaries were like irradiated toast.

When her leg started to shake again, she knew Monday’s family dinner wouldn’t go gently into that good night of forgotten things. The quickest way to confirm what she suspected her father had done was to straight-shot ask Pink Mountain’s owner, Joe. But she didn’t see his big truck in the lot.

At mandatory family dinner, Jessie had dropped news of her job. That she had one, but not its specific whereabouts. With her parents, Jessie always behaved as if she were conducting the world’s least interesting disinformation campaign.

Her father had pushed his armchair back a dramatic inch. The wood creaked. “Select a current Poseidon Group business if you feel the need to work outside the home. One of our in-town holdings.”

From across the table, like way across, as if they were the bloody Victorians, Jessie’s mom added: “Oh, that sounds nice. Doesn’t that sound nice, Jessica?”

Her younger brothers—Junior, Spence, and Chad—snickered. Because they were boys, they got away with it.

“But it will be over the school break so as not to interfere with your studies.” Jessie’s father cleared his throat. “And if you require summer schooling, there will be no job.”

Smiling like she always did, a little zombie-land meets too much wine, Jessie’s mom said: “Oh, but if the sale goes through with the Italian place, that might be a good summer job for our—”

“I said current holding. Jessica does not need additional burdens to successful graduation.” Her father stared her down. “You’ll call immediately after the meal and explain you’re not allowed to accept employment.”

Now Jessie couldn’t tell her family that Cs got degrees or that she wouldn’t be quitting her job. Her father hadn’t threatened to belt her in a long while. But he would with statements like that . . . at the family table. Jessie ate another mouthful of limp carrots, a not-great feeling settling up in her bones.

Her father went on: “She’ll work in an air-conditioned office. Answering phones or sending follow-up emails or even filing invoices.”

“Oh!” her mom exclaimed. “That’s better than food service. What was I thinking?”

But for Jessie, the bad seed had already cracked. She had on-purpose, no-take-backs interviewed at Pink Mountain because it wasn’t part of her father’s portfolio. And now she had a sinking suss that wasn’t true anymore. Or wouldn’t be for long if her father was truly acquiring “the Italian place.”

In the Land Rover, Jessie glanced murderously at the stack of homework weighing down her passenger seat. She’d have to find time for it this weekend, and that, as much as remembering any of her family dinners, soured her. The satellite radio was playing real pump-up music but her right leg continued shaking hard. Tight black jeans normally made her feel all badassery. Even that wasn’t working today. Plus, she needed to smoke.

Her teeth chattered.

Nerves sucked.

The job at Pink Mountain was supposed to be step one in her grand escape: secure external funding her parents couldn’t touch and apply to trade school to become a welder. That plan would crash and burning man if her father was purchasing the place.

She’d have to do the dirty and ask Joe to confirm or deny. One blink for Baby, bad news is the only news, two for Nopeses. Or they could use Morse code, but then Jessie would have to google Morse code and that seemed overcooked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jessie’s new coworker, walking the way she walked everywhere, direct and with a mission in mind, swung into view. The girl didn’t even glance about the parking lot. She owned it, all rolling hips, powered full up.

It was hot.

For a microsecond, Jessie rethought her no smoking in the Land Rover policy.

Watching Berlin Chambers disappear into Pink Mountain, Jessie tucked rebel curls behind her ears and willed her hands, which were now in on the party, to still. She reached for the door. Confidence was alluring, Jessie reminded herself. The other option was to freeze into a Popsicle and grant her father the win. So it was exactly no pancake-flipping option at all.

CAM

In the quiet before the dinner rush, Cam inhaled a Coke, legs dangling from the metal prep counter, almost touching the floor, but not quite. The Coke was a balm. So was the chance to rest. His feet hurt from standing all day in worn sneakers.

The staff doorbell trilled.

Cam’s mom’s best friend’s rule-thumping daughter had arrived. And she hated him like it was her prime directive. He offered Berlin a two-finger wave.

“Hello, Cameron,” she returned icily.

Her glasses were brand spanking new. Her cheeks were flushed. Wind-chapped, not colored with drugstore product. That was Berlin. Always completely authentic. Shrugging out of her handmade parka, she traded it for one of the shop aprons.

And those glasses suited her. Terribly. His favorite color. Coke red, studded with diamonds. Or probably more like Swarovski crystals, the kind his littlest sister, Sami, wouldn’t stop talking about wanting for her regalia. Just last week, he and his twelve-year-old twin sisters, Tanya and Callie, had caught Sami playing with her favorite stuffed toy—the buffalo Cam gifted her when she was born—telling it about how good those crystals shined when a dancer moved. ...