There’s a new Montana-made energy drink at the Co-op and it costs $5.49 for a single can. Five forty-nine. For caffeine.

I work the breakfast shift at a restaurant on Main and the closing shift at a bar on Rouse. I need caffeine the way most people need oxygen. But I have been drinking gas station coffee for $1.79 since I moved here and it has worked fine. My hands shake a little. That’s character.

Now everyone at work is buying this new can because it has “clean ingredients” and a mountain on the label. It’s the same caffeine. It comes from the same plant. But it’s local, so people act like it was hand-harvested by a guy named Cody on a ranch outside Wilsall.

I tried one. It tasted like someone dissolved a multivitamin in sparkling water and then whispered the word “Montana” over it. I went back to my gas station coffee the next morning. Some of us are not here for the experience. Some of us are here because we have nine hours of work left and our body has forgotten what sleep feels like.