The Challenge By Gary Soto

Like a boomerang, lies come back to strike us with the very force we used to throw them. In the short story, “The challenge” by Gary Soto, which is located in Fresno, California a new girl in the school called Estela takes Joses's attention and he tries to impress her and get to know her, and win her interest. In the story the protagonist, Jose learns that lies will never get you anywhere.

In the beginning, Jose lies to impress his crush. At lunchtime Jose approach he wanted to challenge her to a racketball game since she seems to play the approached her and starts a small conversation. “‘Hi,’” José said, sitting across the table from her. ‘How do you like our school?’ Estela swallowed, cleared her throat, drank from her milk carton until

After Jose ask Estela to a game of racketball he gets worried and tries to find a way to learn how to play and goes to his uncle and asks him "….. ‘Freddie, I need to borrow your racquetball racket,’ José said. Freddie rubbed his sweaty face on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. ‘I didn’t know you played.’ ‘I don’t. I got a game tomorrow.’ ‘But you don’t know how to play.’ José had been worrying about this on his bike ride over. He had told Estela that he had won tournaments. ‘I’ll learn,’ José said. ‘In one day? Get serious.’ ‘It’s against a girl’”(Soto 3). José is asking to borrow Freddie's racquetball racket because he has a game the following day. Freddie is surprised because he didn't know José played racquetball. When José admits he doesn't know how to play and is only playing against a girl, Freddie doubts that José will be able to learn the game in just one day, and Jose lies to himself thinking he could just win because she is a girl. José approached his father who was outside watering the grass shirtless with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Wanting to know if a girl had ever beaten his father in a sport, José ask. “‘Dad, has a girl ever beaten you at anything?’..... ‘Only talking,’ he said. ‘They can outtalk a man any day of the week.’ “No, in sports.” His father thought for a while and then said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ His father’s tone of voice didn’t encourage José”(Soto 3-4) This evidence proves that even though his dad hides