Java: Can a method call return a value in one of the arguments?

Question

Can I return or change the value of a string variable when called from Java? I know that a method can return a value, but if I want to have some values changed, can I use a pointer or something?

For example, if I would be writing a method to extract the first characters of a String, and leave the original string without those values, could I do something like:

public static String popFirstChars(String text, int amount) {
        String extract = text.substring(0, amount);
        String remaining = text.substring(amount +1, text.length());

        // this is what I don't know if it's possible:
        text = remaining;

        // this is the standard return
        return extract;
}