At first, Connie thought she had missheard what Gideon said. "My hair is what? Gideon, what are you talking ab..." She froze mid-sentence as she looked down at her hair and saw what Gideon had. Her eyes widened and a frightened look slowly spread across her face. As she became more worked up, so did her hair, which freaked her out even more. She started breathing heavily and, for reasons she didn't know, slowly walking backwards. Unfortunately for her, she had been standing directly in front of the open door of the staircase which led down to the school's furnace room two floors deeper. As she retreated a bit faster, she backed up directly into the railing that covered the drop down the stair well. Dirk tried to reach out and grab her shaking hand, but it was too late. She hit the rail and flipped backwards over top of it, falling down into the opening with a short scream. Strangely, her yell did not sound like she traveled down the stairwell at all, instead sounding as if she had stayed right at the top. Dirk ran to the railing and looked over, but instead of racing down the stairs to where Connie would have fallen, he stayed at the railing staring at something just below the edge with a look of surprise on his face, not one of saddness or grief.
She didn't actually fall down the stairwell. She unintentionally utilized some of her (undiscovered) powers to grab hold of a small unused water pipe protruding from the otherwise flat wall about six feet down from the top.