The boy decides to grow in his garden, legs stuck in dirt like roots thirsting for water. He grabs a watering can, dribbles the liquid onto his decaying body, believing that it would make him grow.  
He believed in many legends: Puss in Boots, Rumplestilskin, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Every night since his father passed, his mother read him stories from a book of folklore. To the boy, these stories became lullabies, lulling him to sleep each night. Puss gets skinned by an enraged king after he realizes he was played. The miller's daughter never guessed Rumplestilskin's name. He laughed until his sides split open, before clawing the firstborn out of its mother's cradle.  
But the boy believed Jack's story the most; it stuck to him like the sap-like glue he'd used to press his windows shut at night. Jack was naive. He didn't listen to his mother's warnings, even though she only wanted what was best for him. Their family, already burdened with debt from Jack's late father, struggled to make ends meet and was left with nothing but their cow to be traded for food. But Jack still chose to trade the cow for beans.  
His disappointed mother threw the beans out the window. The next morning, Jack awoke to find a beanstalk where they had landed. He climbed to the peak, legs aching, and found a castle resting on the clouds. At first, he returned from the giant's castle with just a single gold coin. But his curiosity quickly turned into greed. Despite his mother's pleas, he kept climbing back for more until the Giant had caught up to him and thrown him down the beanstalk. Jack fell, and as he landed, his feet became roots and his head became the bud of a flower—red just like his messy hair.  
The boy's mother would always pause before Jack could fall, her fingers tracing the edge of the page as if she could feel it happening.  
"He reached too high," she'd whisper, tapping the boy's chest like she was warning something inside of him. "That's what happens when you don't listen."  
She told the story over and over, and each time, Jack fell a little faster. Sometimes she'd say the flower at the end wasn't red from his hair, but red from the landing.  
To keep out any possible harm, the mother made sure that the boy always kept his window glued shut. She checked nightly to make sure that it was still glued so that her son would forever remain safe in her rickety house.  
The boy hated how stuffy the room became with the window shut. The air inside would feel heavier, pressing against his skin until his shirt stuck to his skin. Each morning, he peeled off the layers of glue clinging onto his windowsill. And after dinner, he'd reapply them—just enough to pass his mother's inspection. 
The boy had always loved sitting by a grove of oak trees near his house. He'd first known about the spot when his mother took him there after school, and warned him never to reach for the branches. 
"Some things don't grow right," she said, pressing her forehead against one tree's trunk, her eyes distant. 
She soon returned to the house to make dinner, but the boy stayed. Mirroring his mother's movements, he pressed his forehead against the tree trunk, waiting for something to happen.  
When he pulled back, his forehead tingled where it had pressed the tree. Before, he had never questioned his mother's vague statements. But, the boy lingered, half-convinced that if he stayed long enough, the tree's secrets would choose to reveal themselves to him. 
No matter how long he waited, he heard nothing but a bird chirping in its nest. He tilted his head, trying to see where the nest was, yet even on the tips of his toes, he couldn't see over the first branch.  
The boy reached upward, pulling himself off the ground. He climbed another two branches before spotting the nest of bluebirds. As he tried to scooch closer, he heard a scream from the bottom of the tree. 
"What are you doing?" She yelled, hands pulling at the roots of her graying hair. "I told you not to climb the tree." 
The boy meekly climbed down and his mother grabbed him by the wrist, jerking him into the house.. He trailed after her silently, but glanced back at the tree—wishing he could've at least seen the city below. The night after, the boy decided that the grove was his.  
He waited for his mother to go to work the next day, before scaling the highest branch, for the view. A city stood at the foot of the hill, its buildings piercing through a layer of clouds, as if built upon them. The boy's mother knew every secret he had—not that he had many. After all, she had long taught him the importance of honesty. But the boy thought, for once, that holding onto a secret of his own might not be half bad. 
 
A year ago, his teacher had called his mother with concerns. The boy had thought he was being smart. He had pocketed all the beans the class had used for their math lessons, and had begun to dig a hole in the middle of the school garden. He ripped out plants planted by other children and continued to dig until his teacher pried him off the dirt.  
She'd called his mother right after, shaking her head in disbelief while he sat in her chair, trying to get the dirt from underneath his nails out. His mother didn't scold him when he came back home from school that day. She'd called him down for dinner and didn't say anything more.  
During the nightly reading, she just brushed his hair. He prodded her arm a few times, but she just kept brushing at his curls. The boy had pushed the book towards her and asked her to read, yet she'd shaken her head and told him to sleep tight—before walking back to her room. The boy'd stared at her door, waiting patiently, thinking that she'd come back and read it. Yet for the rest of the night, she never came out. 
His mother began to skip the nightly reading, even after the boy stopped getting in trouble. He often placed the book on her lap, hoping she'd pick it up and read like she'd used to. Yet, his mother would only flip to Jack's story and murmur. She lingered on the picture of the beanstalk, her thumb smudging over the page until the paper softened. Around it, her red pen had drawn circles, thick lines gouging the stalk as if she wanted to blot it out.  
She never scribbled near the castle, nor the giant, nor even Jack himself—only the stalk. But the boy's eyes always slid past her marks, landing on Jack's feet where the illustrator had drawn roots curling into the dirt, his hair blooming into petals. After another skipped reading, the boy decided that night he'd plant his feet next to the oak tree. He packed his valuables in a sack: the leather book and five beans. 
He glances at the house, somewhat hoping that his mother would come out, and would plant her feet next to him as well. He hopes she'd recognize the new plant was her son, and read him stories under his branches. The boy stands there, until his feet become roots pressing down into the soil, and arms become worms scrounging for water.