What is the effect of ending the passage with the words “she was not sure, yet, which one had cost him more”?
Read a Literary Passage · ELPAC Grades 11–12 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A short story or scene, with questions about characters, events and what words mean in context.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
The Second Set of Keys
Nadia had worked the front counter at her uncle's tire shop every summer since she was fourteen, and she knew the rhythm of it the way she knew the walk from the bus stop. Customers came in angry about a slow leak and left calm. The phone rang twice and then stopped. On Fridays her uncle counted the register twice and got a different number both times.
In June he handed her a second set of keys. “You open on Tuesdays,” he said, and went back to the lift without waiting for an answer.
She did not tell him that she had already sent in her housing deposit, or that the university was four hours north, or that the counselor had underlined the word irreversible next to the date on the form. She told herself there was time. The keys went into the zip pocket of her backpack, where they knocked against her water bottle all summer.
By August the pocket had worn thin. She had opened the shop thirty times. She had learned which suppliers answered the phone before eight and which invoices her uncle let drift, and she had started, without deciding to, writing the day's numbers in a notebook so that Friday's count came out the same twice.
On her last Tuesday she arrived early, turned on the compressor, and stood in the cold smell of rubber, waiting for something to tell her what she owed the place. Her uncle came in at seven with two coffees, which he had never once done. “The notebook,” he said. “Leave it where I can find it.”
He did not ask her to stay. That was the part she turned over on the drive north, and the part she came back to in October when the dining hall was loud and nobody knew her name. He had given her the keys and then he had given her the road, and she was not sure, yet, which one had cost him more.
The question
Choose the best answer.
What is the effect of ending the passage with the words “she was not sure, yet, which one had cost him more”?
- It suggests that her uncle regrets teaching her the business.
- It leaves her uncle's sacrifice unresolved, which is the question she carries north with her.Correct answer
- It reveals that Nadia plans to return to the shop after her first year.
- It shows that Nadia blames herself for the shop's disorganized records.
Why “It leaves her uncle's sacrifice unresolved, which is the question she carries north with her.” is correct
This is an author's-craft question about why a writer withholds an answer. The word 'yet' keeps the reader inside Nadia's uncertainty instead of settling it, and the October detail, a loud dining hall where nobody knows her name, shows her still turning it over months later. A useful prompt for a student is to ask what would change if the sentence gave an answer: the uncle would become a finished character rather than the question she takes with her.
Why the other answers are wrong
- It suggests that her uncle regrets teaching her the business. — Nothing in his behavior reads as regret; he offers the keys, the coffee and no obstacle.
- It reveals that Nadia plans to return to the shop after her first year. — The passage ends in October with the question still open and says nothing about returning.
- It shows that Nadia blames herself for the shop's disorganized records. — The disorganized records are a problem she quietly solved, not one she is blamed for.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 11–12, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 11–12. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
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