“The brief letter included C.L.’s name. Michaela fired up her computer and opened Google’s browser. (Wouldn’t you?) She typed in C.L.’s full name. At first, she saw a bunch of unrelated posts. Then she typed in his city and the word obituary—and there he was, staring her in the face. He looked young, serious, and . . . black. She felt startled, and wasn’t sure why. She had nothing against black people; she really didn’t know any. She had almost no black classmates and lived in a town that was uniformly white. She tried a few new searches and quickly found a few articles about C.L.’s death. Her shaking intensified.”

—Joshua D. Mezrich