From Act III, Chapter 1

. . . Soon Ibrahim was walking the halls in a daze. It was the second week in February. A teacher from the school showed him where his classes were--a light schedule, mostly English, art, and phys ed--and then let him wander.

That's where, in the hallway, he was spotted by a girl.

She walked right up, asked who he was, and said, "We should be friends." First day.

Her name was Jillian Davidson, and she was used to taking in strays. She'd grown up in Kane, like almost everyone else around here, and her mother took in foster children--a conventional way for a woman with a strong maternal instinct to make ends meet. In fact, about thirty foster kids, of all shapes and sizes, had passed through Jillian's house by the time she was in elementary school.

Jillian saw Ibrahim's face--a handsome face--and saw the look of someone who was lost. She'd seen quite a bit of that. Ibrahim was open, at this point, to anything. The experience in Denver had tenderized him, giving him a kind desperate readiness to grab whatever passed by him and hold on tight. . . .

That, though, was the past. Now he needed to make things work. This was, after all, one of the most powerful natural forces on the planet: a second chance.

They started to talk, he and Jillian. He realized that the last time he'd spent this much time talking to a girl was when he was a child. In his village, all the kids played together, at least until puberty. Once they crossed that river toward adulthood, the gender divisions of traditional Islam took hold. Since then, he had never really talked to very many girls. Back in Denver, Jasmine--who had a serious boyfriend, and seemed very attentive to the rules Ibrahim was raised with--had been the first. They used to talk often, but nothing like this. He and Jillian were on the phone almost every night. A thousand bits traveled between them across e-mail and instant messaging. . . .

Jillian Davidson is a teenager from Kane, Pennsylvania who befriended Ibrahim during the second half of his year in the States. As a close friend, Jillian helps Ibrahim feel at home in America and, as the stirrings of romance develop between them, she helps binds his affections to this country. The Way of the World tells the story of their friendship and of the challenge Jillian's past presents to the strict traditions in which Ibrahim was raised.