Excerpt from Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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.

Excerpted from Those Pink Mountain Nights by Niall Ferguson. Copyright © 2023 by Niall Ferguson. Excerpted by permission of Heartdrum. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.