Life is Strange: Steph's Story


 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Leave us a Review
 Copyright
 Dedication
 The Timeline – Author’s Note
 Spring
 One
 Two
 Three
 Four
 Five
 Summer
 Six
 Seven 
 Eight
 Nine
 Fall
 Ten
 Eleven
 Twelve
 Winter
 Thirteen
 Fourteen
 Spring
 Fifteen
 Sixteen
 Seventeen
 Summer
 Eighteen
 Nineteen
 Twenty
 Twenty-One
 Fall
 Twenty-Two
 Twenty-Three
 Twenty-Four
 Winter
 Twenty-Five
 Twenty-Six
 Twenty-Seven
 Twenty-Eight
 Twenty-Nine
 Thirty
 Thirty-One
 Thirty-Two
 Thirty-Three
 Spring
 Thirty-Four
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 
 
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 Life is Strange: Steph’s Story
 Print edition ISBN: 9781789099614
 E-book edition ISBN: 9781789099669
 Published by Titan Books
 A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
 www.titanbooks.com
 First edition: March 2023
 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
 Life is Strange © 2015–2023 Square Enix Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
 Rosiee Thor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
 A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
 
 For everyone who marches to
 the beat of their own drum
 And for those who can’t yet,
 but still want to
 The Timeline - Author’s Note
 Life is Strange is a world of choices. Some are small and others are downright cosmic. None are inconsequential. Though Steph’s life exists outside Arcadia Bay and Haven Springs, she is greatly impacted by events in both. Steph’s Story occurs in a timeline where Arcadia Bay was destroyed but Chloe Price was not, one of many possibilities in the vast multiverse. Whether your choices mirrored these or not, I hope you choose to read Steph’s Story with an open mind and continue to bring your creativity to the infinite universes of Life is Strange.
 
 Spring
 
 One
 They say home is where the heart is, but I’ve never been in love. Sure, I’ve had my crushes—some attainable and others… not so much. My childhood bedroom used to be covered in posters of Kristen Stewart and Avril Lavigne. Not anymore.
 I stand before the plain wooden door to my bedroom. Or what will become my bedroom the second I walk across the threshold.
 
 I tap out a text to Jordie, fingers too jittery to spell anything right. Luckily, autocorrect has my back. He replies almost immediately.
 
 
 
 My chest clenches and my throat closes up a bit. Dad’s cleared a room for me in his new house. It’s not really new. He’s lived here since we moved to Seattle five years ago. I’ve managed to stay away as long as I can, between college dorms and couch surfing. But it’s time to say goodbye to mooching off friends and hello to mooching off my father, since I’ve got my diploma and a knot the size of a small country under my shoulder blade.
 Maybe I’ll hang that on the wall. The diploma, not my shoulder knot.
 
 
 I tuck my phone into my back pocket and take a deep breath before turning the knob and letting the door swing open.
 Dad’s put in his best effort to make it feel like a real room. There’s a plaid duvet covering the bed and it’s not even an ugly color—blue and yellow, my favorites. Plus he’s built an Ikea dresser and some shelves all by himself, like he doesn’t realize I’m a lesbian.
 “You got everything, Steph?” Dad calls up the stairs.
 It’s strange, hearing his voice. We’ve lived in the same city all this time, but I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve actually been in the same space. Mostly we email. It’s not that we don’t get along; it’s just that we thrive in text format. Guess it would be weird to email him my response to such a simple question, though.
 “Yep. I’m all set!” I glance down at my belongings. It’s a meager showing. Just my trusty purple suitcase and backpack. Commence: the great unpacking.
 It should take me a grand total of ten minutes to unload my clothes and toiletries and so on. I cut way back on all my stuff when I graduated. It just wasn’t practical to be lugging around full-size shampoo bottles or my boxes full of vinyl. Only the essentials for me. The one exception I made was my art supplies.
 They’re the first thing I unpack—a sketchbook with a tattered cover and a plastic bag full of colored pencils at various lengths. My favorite color is near the end of its life—RIP Unmellow Yellow—so I’ll need to scrounge up some more before starting the next issue of my zine. For now, I stow them in the top drawer of the desk and turn back to the rest of the room.
 The walls are bare in this sanitized way that makes me nostalgic for DigiPen. Back in my dorm room there wasn’t an inch of wall to be seen there behind all my posters, concert tickets, and concept art for my senior project—a fully realized tabletop RPG set underwater that culminated in a battle between mecha mermaids and an undead