But Riley didn’t make that promise with the intention of just appeasing her brother. She made a promise she would die before breaking. I watched her defeat every odd over the last two years, going from a central midfielder on our girls’ soccer team to the starting kicker for our football team in one summer. And I didn’t care what anyone said — she didn’t get that position because of what happened to Gavin, or because she was a girl in a world trying to make up for a fucked-up patriarchal system. She earned it. She was the best kicker I’d ever played with.
