Mick sat on the front steps and kept her eyes on Ralph. Bubber wasn’t a sissy like Spareribs said. He just loved pretty things. She’d better not let old Spareribs get away with that. ‘A person’s got to fight for every single thing they get,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve noticed a lot of times that the farther down a kid comes in the family the better the kid really is. Younger kids are always the toughest. I’m pretty hard ’cause I’ve a lot of them on top of me. Bubber—he looks sick, and likes pretty things, but he’s got guts underneath that.
