literature

Sully's Lie and How He Fixed It

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He was in trouble. Sulley knew this from the first moment that Dean Hardscrabble told him to leave Monster’s University. As he stared down at the phone in his hands, he knew that there would be no easy way of telling his parents that he had been expelled.
“Come on, James, it isn’t that bad,” he tried to tell himself, “the worse they could do is yell at you….more so Dad than Mom, but it won’t be so bad.”
“Trying to psych yourself up?” Mike said as he entered the living room and sat next to him on the bright pink couch. They were at Mike’s mom’s house, who had kindly let them stay there in the painfully pink house until they got things sorted out.
“It’s easier if you don’t think about it too hard.”
“That’s easy for you to say," Sulley mumbled "Your mom is nice.”
“Yea, but she still nearly yelled my horns off when I told her.”
Sulley took a deep breath and looked at the phone again. Mike was right. There was no way to make it easier besides just saying it. He dialed the number, pressed call, and waited as the phone rang.
“Hello?” his mother said on the other end.
“Hey Mom, it’s James.”
“Sweetheart, I was wondering when you would call. I hardly hear from you anymore.”
“Yea, sorry, I’ve been sort of busy.”
“Aw, it’s okay. I know how intense college can be. I’ve been wanting to go up there and visit you, but your father thinks that it’s best to wait for you to visit us. He thinks I’ll embarrass you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. But, um, Mom I….um-”
“Yea?”
“I was calling because….I have to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
He froze up. If he told her this now, then he would eventually have to tell her about everything else that he was hiding.
“James, is everything okay?” his mom said, sounding worried.
Mike gestured for him to go on.
“Uh, yea Mom, everything is fine. There’s just something I really need to tell you and Dad.”
“Oh, wait, let me put it on speaker.”
“Hey Jimmy!” he could hear his father say, “How goes the scaring?”
“It’s going,” Sulley replied back, wanting so badly to just hang up the phone and beg to be let back into Monsters University.
“So, what is that you wanted to tell us?”
“Well, I, uh….I was thinking that we should have dinner sometime.”
The phone call ended shortly afterwards with dinner plans made at Sulley’s parents’ place tomorrow afternoon. After he got off the phone, Sulley laid back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “What did I do?”
“You just made dinner arrangements to tell your parents that you were kicked out of college,” Mike said, “And why did your dad ask about scaring?”
“He thinks I’m still in the scaring program.”
“What?! You mean you haven’t told you parents about anything?”
Sulley sighed and looked at Mike. “As far as they know, I passed the scaring exam and I’m still with the ROARs.”
Mike stared back at him in disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
“They were so proud of me when I made it to college and joined the ROARs that I just….froze whenever I tried to tell them. And when we went into the scare games, I thought that if we won and got back into the scaring program, I wouldn’t have to tell them at all.”
“But we didn’t get back in and now you’re going to have to tell them that you lied to them on top of everything else.”
“I know, I don’t need you to shove it down my throat. I’ve got to figure something out by tomorrow.”
“What is there to figure out? Just tell them.”
“Yea, but I have to figure out how I’m going to tell them.”
“Okay,” Mike said as he stood up on the couch, “Imagine I’m your dad.”
“You look nothing like my dad.”
“That’s why I said imagine. Hey son," Mike said in a deeper voice, "What is it that you wanted to tell me?”
Sulley rolled his eyes but went with it. “Well, Dad, I’ve sort of been lying to you and Mom and I wanted to come clean about it.”
“Oh, we're angry, but still love and support you and-”
“No, no, no, if we’re going to do this, you have to at least act like my dad.”
“I’ve never seen him,” Mike said as he threw up his arms, “How am I supposed to know how he acts?”
“I’ll show you,” Sulley said as he got up and faced Mike, “As soon as I tell him, he’ll say, ‘What? How could you let that happen?! Me and your mom worked hard to get you into college and you completely blew it.’”
“Is everything alright in there?” Mike’s mom called from her room.
“Yea, everything is fine,” Mike called back, “Sulley, I don’t think your dad would be that harsh about it.”
“He would. One time, I was sent home from middle school for clowning in class. My dad was so mad, he yelled at me for two hours straight. The only reason he stopped was because Mom told him to. And for days, he would hold it against me until I did better in school. There’s no telling how long he’s going to hold this against us.”
“Us?” Mike said as he hopped off the couch, “What does he have against me?”
“You’re one of the reasons I was kicked out. But,” Sulley said before Mike could object, “It’s my fault, too.”
“Please try to leave me out of it. If your dad is as scary as he sounds, then I don’t want to get on his bad side.” Mike shuddered. “I can only imagine how he looks.”
“I’d show you his scare card, but it’s in storage along with the rest of my stuff. You’ll probably get to see him when he picks me up.”
“You told them to come here!?”
“Didn't you hear me on the phone? Relax, I just told them I’d be visiting a friend.”
“There you go lying again.”
“I thought you were helping me.”
“Just be honest, that’s all you can do….unless you want to spent the rest of your life trying to keep up with this charade.”
Sulley thought about that. Would it be that bad?

When the next day rolled around, Sulley spend much of the it worrying over what was to come. The hours went by maddeningly slow. It got so bad that at one point, Mike had to turn all the clocks around so that he would stop looking at them and Mike’s mom tried to distract him with different tasks.
“You couldn’t of just read a book,” Mike grumbled as he stood on Sulley’s hands and pulled soaky leaves out of the gutters in the backyard of his mom’s house.
“I’m pretty sure she would of had us do this eventually,” Sulley said as he struggled to find his footing on the wobbly stool he was standing on. The only ladder in the house had been devoured by termites, even though it had been made of metal.
“Would you quit moving?”
“I’m trying. Hurry up.”
“I would if I could see what I was doing. Lift me higher.”
“I already lifted you-”
“James, your dad is here!” Mike’s mom called from in the house.
Instead of going towards the front, he dashed for the back gate and planned to jump it.
“What are you doing?!” Mike said, still in Sulley’s hands.
“Oh, sorry,” he said as he put him down, “I was just, uh, making sure that-”
“You were making a run for it. Sulley, you have to tell them one day. It might as well be now.”
“This isn’t going to go well.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I-”
“Jimmy!” Sulley’s dad called as he came out of the backdoor with Mike’s mom.
Sulley’s dad, Billy, was taller than him by at least a foot and was easily more muscular than him. His turquiose fur was faded and dull and his tail dragged behind him, but he still looked tough enough to rival any younger monster. His horns were two inches out of his head, his eyebrows put dark shadows over his eyes, his teeth looked long and sharp when he smiled, and he had an underbite that showed off his lower canine teeth.
“Hey, Dad,” Sulley said, trying his best to pull off a sincere smile. He was happy to see him, he just wished he had better news to tell him.
"Come here and give your old man a hug," his dad said as he hugged him, "First year of college finally out of the way, huh Jimmy?"
"Uh, Dad?" Sulley said as he broke the hug and tried to change the subject, "This is Mike, the friend I was telling you about."
"Pleasure to meet cha."
"Pleasure's all mine," Mike said as he shook Billy's hand and noticed how uncomfortably   deep and booming the bigger monster's voice was compared to Sulley's, "I've heard alot about you. Your a big deal at the school."
"Yeah, I was Professor Knight's star pupil when I went to the university. Take care to listen to everything that monster has to teach you, Jimmy."
Sulley just nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
"He's already taught us a lot," Mike continued.
"You're in the scaring program, too?" Billy asked, surprised, "Well, why don't you join us for dinner? You can make sure Jimmy here tells us all the details."
"Well, uh, I-"
"Go ahead, Micheal, you can finish the gutters when you get back," Mike's mom called from the porch.
"Any fellow scarer is welcomed in my house," Billy said as he led them to the car.
It was new looking and decent size for the behemoths but Sulley had to give Mike a boost to get him in. Billy didn't say much when Sulley asked about the new vehicle.
Sulley's mom greeted them from the kitchen when they made it to Sulley's parent's house. It was a modest house that opened up to a hallway that led to the living room and stairs that lead to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Beyond the living room was the kitchen/dinning room.
"Come on in and make yourselves at home. Dinner will be finished in a minute."
"I'll help your mother finish," Billy said to Sulley, "Go ahead and head upstairs to your room. Me and your mom got cha a little somethin'."
Hating himself, Sulley went upstairs with Mike following. At his bedroom door he hesitated. "What if it's something they can't return?"
Mike shrugged and pushed opened the door.
There on his bed, shiny and new, were a pair of car keys. Amazed and feeling sick to his stomach, Sulley picked them up and looked outside his window to the car that his dad had driven them in. "They bought me a car."
"Hopefully, they kept the receats," Mike joked.
Sulley glared at the cyclopes then went down stairs. His dad was waiting for him.
"You guys got me a car," Sulley said, still shocked.
"Brand new," his dad laughed, "It put a bit of a dent in our savings but it was worth it. You earned it, Jimmy."
Sulley could only stand there like an idiot with his mouth open.
"Come on, champ, your mom's got dinner ready."
When everyone was sitting at the table, Sulley's mom brought over a steaming pot. His mother was about his height, was sky blue with purple streaks going down her back and arms, and was much slender than him. She had short thin horns sticking out of her head and unlike her husband, only one upper tooth stuck out of her small mouth. She wore a blue apron with matching oven mits.
"I hope you all are hungry because I made Sulley's favorite," she said as she sat it down and lifted the top of the pot. The smell that came out of it was mouth watering (for a monster). "Stu suprise."
As his mom passed him a bowl of it, Sulley reluctantly took it. His mother's cooking was the best, but he didn't feel like he could stomach it or deserved to.
"Is something wrong?" his mother asked when she noticed that he wasn't eating.
"Uh, it's just.....the car, you guys, it must of cost a fortune."
"Don't worry, sweetheart, me and your father were happy to do it."
"I can't except it."
"But James, you earned it."
"No, I didn't!" Sulley said as he stood from the table.
Mike cringed and waited for the inevitable.
"I got kicked out of school," he said, looking down at the floor. Her heard his mother gasp, but didn't hear a thing from his father. Afraid he would lose his nerves, he kept going. He told them what had happened, from breaking Hardscarbles record breaking canister and getting kicked out of the scaring program to cheating during the Scare Games and helping Mike out of the human world.
When he was finished, he looked up. His mother was across from him and in tears. On his left, Mike was looking down. To his right, his father's stare was enough to scare the rest of his courage away.
"When you came home for the break," Billy growled, "You told us you were still in the scaring program."
"I lied," Sulley whispered, "I lied because I didn't want to disappoint you guys."
"Oh, I'm passed dissapointed!" Billy roared as he also got up, "This whole time I'm thinkin' you've made a name for yourself and you've got your life together, only to find out that you've been lying to us this whole time!"
"You would of been angry if I told you I failed the test," Sulley said back.
"You didn't fail, you got busted for damaging school property with this piece of work," Billy said as he gestured towards Mike, "And then you kept following him and that's why you're where you are now."
"Billy," Sulley's mom started.
"Leave Mike out of this, Dad. I probably would have failed that test, anyways."
"And why is that?"
"I sort of," he whispered.
"Speak up!" his father roared.
"I didn't study."
"Oh," his dad said as he moved right in front of Sulley, "So on top of everything else, you weren't serious about graduating?"
"I was, I just I kept goofing off and I was hanging out with the Roars and-"
"I don't want to hear anymore excuses! You know, you've made a fool out of me and your mother. We worked hard to sent you to school. You've taken everything we worked so hard on and flushed it down the drain. I thought you wanted this."
"I do, I just screw up and-"
"What do you plan to do now? Don't expect me and your mom to provide for you like you're a kid because those days are over."
"Me and Mike already know what we're going to do."
"Oh really, and what's that?"
Sulley looked to Mike for help. Afterall, it was his idea.
"Uh, Mr. Sullivan, Sir," Mike stuttered, "There's a job opening at Monsters Inc. We've already applied for it and with the money we'd be able to get an apartment close to work."
"I doubt they hire drop outs for something as serious as scaring," Billy said matter of factly.
"The job isn't for a scarer. We applied for jobs....in the mail room."
Sulley held his breathe, expecting his father to completely lose his mind and go beserk. But he didn't. He stared at Mike for a while, then slowly panned his view towards him and stared him down for what felt like minutes.
Then he turned around and went to the screen door and slide it open. "Outside."
Sulley instantly felt like a child again. Whenever he would get into big trouble, his father would take him out to the back, find a nice thin branch, tear off the twigs, and whip his rear end till he was bauling like a baby. And if he tried to run, his father would swing at whatever body part was the closest.
While avoiding everyone's eyes, Sulley made his way to the middle of the backyard. Billy slide the door closed and went over to one of the trees in their yard.
"I'm sorry."
His father kept his back to him.
"Dad, I know I messed up big time and you should never trust me again, but I didn't completely ruin our lives. I'll work and I'll pay you and mom back. Mike really thought this plan through and if they hire us-"
"What is it with that kid?" Billy said as he suddenly turned around, "It seems like he keeps popping up a lot. And it also seems like he's doing most of the thinking. What are you, his sidekick? Stop letting him get you into trouble!"
"No, I was the one who keeps getting him into trouble!" Sulley yelled. He might be in a world of trouble, but he wasn't about to let his dad talk badly about his friend. " I've been riding his coat tail all year. You might not like his idea about us working in the mail room, but it's the best we've got."
"Watch your tone with me," Billy warned, "You're digging yourself into a bigger hole."
"What do you want me to do, then?"
His father walked over to him. "You're moving back in the house. You'll work in the mail room till you've paid me and your mother back. Then, you'll keep working there and pay your own way to college at Fear Tech and find your own place to rent. And," he said as he pointed to the house, "You'll stop hanging around with that kid. Do you understand me?"
".....No."
"What?" Billy growled.
"You're seeing Mike for something he isn't. And I know I have to pay you guys back, but I'm going to do it the way I see fit. No more colleges and I'm renting that apartment with Mike. I might not be the scarer you want me to be right now, but-"
"Get out," Billy said quietly.
"Wait, what?"
"Get off my property!" Billy roared, "And take that other drop out with you."
"Dad, don't-."
"I'm done trying to help you. If you want to go and screw your life over, then be my guest. Just don't drag me and your mother down with you."
Sulley watched as his father turned his back to him and slid the door nearly off of its track.
"And you! Don't you ever think to bring your one-eyed sorry excuse for a body back over here unless you want trouble."
Only when Billy went upstairs did Sulley enter the house. Mike was still sitting at the table, visably shaking. Without a word, the two left the house and went down the street to the nearest payphone.
While Mike called his mom, Sulley sat on a bench and just stared at nothing. The whole fight had gone by too fast for him and now, the last couple of words clawed away at him as he played the scene over and over. He had gotten into plenty of arguements with his father, but never had he been kicked out of the house.
"I told my mom what happened," Mike mumbled as he sat next to him, "She's on her way.....You weren't kidding about your dad."
"Yeah, I didn't mean to get you yelled at."
"Don't sweat it, Sul. I'm sure he'll come around....eventually."
"I don't know. I've never seen him that angry before. And Mom didn't even say anything."
"I think she went upstairs crying after you and your dad went outside."
"Great." Sulley sighed as he lend back and looked up at the sky, "Not only does Dad hate me, now Mom is probably worried sick about me."
He was tempted to run back home and a least try to talk to his mom, even if that meant dealing with Billy again, but Mike's mom pulled up. He lowered himself into the backseat while Mike sat up front. He let Mike do most of the talking and stared out the window as his childhood home passed by.

Five days later, Mike and Sulley had been accepted to work in the mailroom at Monsters Inc. They had been asleep, Mike in his old room and Sulley on the very pink couch, when Mike's mom woke them up yelling, "You boys are in!" She then handed the letter over to Mike.
"Come on, Sulley," Mike said as he shock the bigger monster's arm, "Aren't you excited?"
"We got jobs, that's great," he said as put his pillow over his head, "Can I go back to sleep?"
"Don't you want to see the letter? This is the start of a new beginning for us and- Hey, what's this?"
"What's what?"
"It's a letter from your dad."
Sleep was immediantly gone from Sulley. He sat up, threw the pillow off of his head (right onto Mike's), and took the letter.
Mike swatted the pillow to the ground. "Watch it! I don't want to touch your slobbery pillow."
"Why would Dad sent me a letter?" Sulley said, more to himself than to Mike.
"Maybe you'll find out if you open it."
Slowly at first, he used his nail to cut the top of the envelope. Sulley unfolded and read the note:

Hey Jimmy,
The last time we spoke, I said some things that I'm not proud of. I was angry, not just because you got kicked out of school or the fact that you kept it from me and your mother, but because I wanted you to follow in your old man's foot steps.
When we sent you off to college, I went to work and bragged about you to the guys until they got sick of hearing about it. I couldn't wait for my son to work by my side. So you can only imagine how disappointed I felt when you told me you were expelled from school. I wish you would have told me sooner.
Then again, I don't think I would have had the guts to tell me about it if I were you. I know how harsh I can be at times, you mother is constantly reminding me. I had every right to be angry, but I had no right to belittle you or your little green friend. You may have failed the test, got expelled, cheated, lied, and went into the human world, but that doesn't mean you've failed at life and that certainly doesn't mean I should give up on you.
I understand your need for independence. With the last name Sullivan, it can be hard to make a name for yourself. I should know, I've dealt with it to. I want you to know that me and your mom want you to be successful in life, but we want you to do it in a way that you will be happy with. So, whether you're a mailman, a college student, or the best scarer who ever lived, know that me and your mother will be there for you. We love you son and we always will.`
This is Mom. Come over soon so that we can redo dinner and don't worry, I'll make sure your father watches his temper. Love you!
Mom and Dad
P.S. This is your father again. Take your friend to the gym. Those sticks he calls arms won't do him good at the factory. Oh, and don't forget to get your car out of the envelope. Put it towards rent and neccessities.

After reading the final line, Sulley checked the envelope again. There, signed by his father, was a check for $10,000 dollars. Unable to believe his eyes, he showed it to Mike, who confirmed it with a bulging eye.
"Well, I guess that takes care of half of our problems. It's a good thing you told them everything." Mike said.
Sulley nodded. Not only did the money help, but knowing that his parents still backed him up took some of edge off of their situation. And it made it so much easier now that he didn't have to hide anything from his parents.
Well, almost anything.
"Mike," Sulley said as he remembered something,  "I didn't tell them everything."
His friend squinted his eye at him. "What didn't you tell them?"
Sulley chuckled. "Well, it has something to do with wire cutters and a factory."
I'll pick a new name for it later, but for now, it is this. While Mike and Sulley were arguing during "Don't Quit", something they said about Sulley's dad inspired me to write this (if you haven't read that one yet, you should). This story takes place before the credits of Monsters University. Hope ya like it! The monsters in this story belong to Disney/Pixar and I do not own them. Like, at all.
© 2016 - 2024 mezzybaby
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PixarFanGirlForever's avatar
Why is it that every time one of us goes through a bad situation, we're oftentimes too afraid or embarrassed to expose the whole truth about it to the others?