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Conrad says it because he panics.
Piper glows. She lights up the whole facility when she first arrives to I.N.S.A.N.E. She looks too bright, too hopeful, too alive. The drugs haven’t hit her. Hellion hasn’t broken her. The kids haven’t turned. Yet. Conrad sees that glow and every neuron in his brain fires warnings. If she doesn’t collapse early, she will break HARD later. He needs her defensive. He needs her MAD. He needs her awake.
So when she greets him, full of courage, "Howdy, Conrad! Do you think I’ll fit in here?” He blurts out the most vicious thing he can think of.
“No. You’re ugly.” He chooses the word like a scalpel. Precise. Surgical. Designed to hurt just enough. The second he says it, he regrets it.
Her face falls. Not dramatically, just enough. A flicker. A crack. A soft collapsing of her smile. Conrad feels it like a needle in his chest. He turns away instantly so she won’t see the horror on his face.
He replayed her expression all night. Every detail.
• the widening of her eyes
• the slight inhale
• the way her chin tucked down
• the hurt she tried to hide
It would become the worst memory of his year.
He lies in bed stiff as stone, staring at the ceiling, whispering: “She needed to hear it. She needed to hear it.” He doesn’t believe himself.
He refuses to talk to her the next day. Conrad Harrington does not experience shame normally. But with Piper? He feels everything too much. Her kindness does that to people, and Conrad has no defense for it. He can’t stand the idea that she believes he meant it. He can’t stand the idea that she might believe she is ugly. That thought cuts deeper than anything I.N.S.A.N.E. or Hellion has ever done to him.
Piper confronts him days later. Quietly. Not angrily — which somehow hurts worse. “Why did you say that to me? Did I do something wrong?”
Conrad looks away. He can’t say the truth: “I’m trying to save you.” He can’t say the lie: “I meant it.” So he says nothing. And Piper walks away thinking he hates her. It kills him slowly.
Later, he overhears another kid calling Piper pretty. He almost blacks out. Because he ruined that for her. Because someone else noticed it. Because he doesn’t deserve to be the one to say it.
Because the word “ugly” is still sitting between them like a wound he made with his own hands.