This is an extract from a story about a boy called Andy. Read it carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it.
The rain was soothing. It was a cold rain, but his body was hot all over, and the rain helped cool him. He had always liked rain. He could remember sitting in Laura’s house one time, the rain running down the windows, and just looking out over the street, watching the people running from the rain. That was when he’d first joined the Royals. He could remember how happy he was the Royals had taken him. The Royals and the Guardians, two of the biggest. He was a Royal. There had been meaning to the title.
Now, in the alley, with the cold rain washing his hot body, he wondered about the meaning. If he died, he was Andy. He was not a Royal. He was simply Andy, and he was dead. And he wondered suddenly if the Guardians who had ambushed him and knifed him had ever once realized he was Andy? Had they known that he was Andy, or had they simply known that he was a Royal wearing a purple silk jacket? Had they stabbed him, Andy, or had they only stabbed the jacket and the title, and what good was the title if you were dying?
I’m Andy, he screamed wordlessly. I’m Andy.
An old lady stopped at the other end of the alley. The garbage cans were stacked there, beating noisily in the rain. The old lardy carried an umbrella with broken ribs, carried it like a queen. She stepped into the mouth of the alley, shopping bag over one arm. She lifted the lids of the garbage cans. She did not hear Andy grunt because she was a little deaf and because the rain was beating on the cans. She collected her string and her newspapers, and an old hat with a feather on it from one of the garbage cans, and a broken footstool from another of the cans. And then she replaced the lids and lifted her umbrella high and walked out of the alley mouth. She had worked quickly and soundlessly, and now she was gone.
The alley looked very long now. He could see people passing at the other end of it, and he wondered who the people were, and he wondered if he would ever get to know them, wondered who it was on the Guardians who had stabbed him, who had plunged the knife into his body.
“That’s for you, Royal!” the voice had said. “That’s for you, Royal!” Even in his pain, there had been some sort of pride in knowing he was a Royal. Now there was no pride at all. With the rain beginning to chill him, with the blood pouring steadily between his fingers, he knew only a sort of dizziness. He could only think: I want to be Andy.
It was not very much to ask of the world.
He watched the world passing at the other end of the alley. The world didn’t know he was Andy. The world didn’t know he was alive. He wanted to say, “Hey, I’m alive! Hey, look at me! I’m alive! Don’t you now I’m alive! Don’t you know I exist?”
He felt weak and very tired. He felt alone and wet and feverish and chilled. He knew he was going to die now. That made him suddenly sad. He was filled with sadness that his life would be over at sixteen. He felt at once as if he had never done anything, never been anywhere. There were so many things to do.
(by Evan Hunter)
Question 1: What impressions of Andy and his situation do the first two paragraphs of the passage create for you?
Question 2: What do you find striking about the way the writer uses words and images to convey Andy’s thoughts and feelings?
Remember to refer closely to the passage in your answer.
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