We Can't Be Friends

[Casper]

I have never really been bothered, or rather, confused by this assertion by Abby until tonight.

She makes an assertion once in the courtyard and reiterates as an i-told-you-so as he leaves her apartment after seeing young Thomas that she can't / couldn't be his friend. Now, if she has "been down this road" before, with befriending young boys who are loyal to her the length of their lives, than this would obviously be inconsistent with her assertion and she would know damn well they could be friends, and understand the ramifications of such a relationship developing. Now this might imply deception, which I refuse to accept because that's just me. So moving on to the next two scenarios (at least the two that come to mind at this moment):

Does she say this out of pity for Owen? (This kid obviously has issues, I wouldn't want to fu** with his life even more, I'm not going to do this to him." But in her curiosity about him, ends up falling helplessly in love with him despite her rather futile efforts (love is love, can't turn it off) to avoid hurting him?

Or is it that Thomas actually is her first (that she met as a child and who's stayed with her for his entire lifetime), and in her mind, is an outlier in this whole "finding serious long-term friends" thing. "If he knew who I was, he'd never want to be with me, never want to stay friends. Thomas was the only exception." (And if this were the case, could one really make a good logical, or rather, statistical argument that Owen would share an identical fate to Thomas? How often do outliers fall on the exact same point?)

[sauvin]

We don't know that there've been others before Thomas.

[DarkGuyver]

I would expect that Abby may have had more friends around her own age after she was turned into a vampire. The only reason I could think off for her to say "Just so you know I cann't be your friend..." to Owen when they first met in the courtyard. Would be to possibly worn him off, because she didn't know anything about him and wanted to be left alone.

[lombano]

I think Abby doesn't want him to end up like Thomas, and it's thus a kind of warning - hence 'I told you we couldn't be friends' when Owen storms off after seeing the photos of her and young Thomas.

[DMt.]

It also may be a kid's way of saying,

'"I like you, I'd like to be your friend [but you'd probably run off screaming if you knew what I am]"..?

[DavidZahir]

I think the answer might be a bit more complex.

Out of necessity, seems to me Abby has developed the habit of disassociation. Eli has almost numbed herself, barely doing more than surviving, but at least has integrated her image of herself as a vampire. Abby appears to have done something else--to have put different parts of her life into niches, keeping them as emotionally separate as possible. A part of her habitually looks out of number one, is careful and thinks (some) about the future. That part is one that (for example) insists that Thomas dispose of the body of the jogger, and likewise gives Owen little "tests" to see how much of the truth he can handle. But another part tries to live as much as possible in the moment and nothing else--the part that wants to chat with Owen via morse code, or play games, or watch Owen lose at Pac-Man. Another part of her is pure vampire. When she gives herself over that part, then any who threaten her are doomed, as are any suitable prey when her undead-self is hungry. Still another part thinks of herself as a little girl, a lonely one who understands too well why she can't have friends--or at least extremely few and far between. This last probably has bitter experience of trying to be "normal" friends with anyone, and seeing it all crash and burn.

"I told you we couldn't be friends" put my heart into my mouth every time. Because it says so much, not even so much the words and context but Chloe Grace Moretz's understanding of what she meant. To the deeply alone, the prospect of a real friend is painful. It offers hope, but only at the risk of searing disappointment. Who has not--to give a parallel--fallen for someone, hard, then when after finally working up the nerve to say or do anything, see all possibilities in that direction close? Multiply that by a thousand. That might well be what Abby feels.

I think she said those initial words--"Just so you know, we can't be friends"--primarily as an act of self defense emotionally. Because a cute, interesting boy her own age who lives nearby cannot help but be a potential source of agony. The real danger is--he's also a source of hope. But crushed hope is a special kind of torture, not least because you know it never really ends. Sooner or later, Abby will try to make another friend. Most of the time, her efforts in that direction will utterly fail.

One assumption we all seem to go with in LMI is that Abby has done this before--groomed a replacement as her previous companion began to fail. But how likely is that, really? Seems to me more likely she's spent years on her own, that her companions don't usually last as long as Thomas. For that matter, Thomas might easily have been killed (by accident for one thing) at any time during the four or five decades he's spent with Abby. Or he could have walked away. I'd bet money that has happened--Abby waking up to find herself alone again. I think Abby is more-or-less always on the lookout for a friend--and that prospect terrifies her but also is something she cannot help but do.

[lombano]

One assumption we all seem to go with in LMI is that Abby has done this before--groomed a replacement as her previous companion began to fail.

I don't, actually. I don't rule it out either, much less that it could happen in the future. Partly it's to do with age; we only know that Abby is at least as old as Thomas, but we've no idea of her actual age - yet I strongly get the impression that she's not that old, certainly not ancient.

[DavidZahir]

Ancient, no. I agree with you.

But--old enough not to remember birthday. And that deleted scene certainly seems more than a century in the past.

[Casper]

"I told you we couldn't be friends" put my heart into my mouth every time. Because it says so much, not even so much the words and context but Chloe Grace Moretz's understanding of what she meant. To the deeply alone, the prospect of a real friend is painful. It offers hope, but only at the risk of searing disappointment. Who has not--to give a parallel--fallen for someone, hard, then when after finally working up the nerve to say or do anything, see all possibilities in that direction close? Multiply that by a thousand. That might well be what Abby feels.

I think she said those initial words--"Just so you know, we can't be friends"--primarily as an act of self defense emotionally. Because a cute, interesting boy her own age who lives nearby cannot help but be a potential source of agony. The real danger is--he's also a source of hope. But crushed hope is a special kind of torture, not least because you know it never really ends. Sooner or later, Abby will try to make another friend. Most of the time, her efforts in that direction will utterly fail.

What I love about this idea is that is so very much counters the thought of Abby being careful and calculating about Owen. I agree with you in how Abby / Moretz says this line as he leaves her apartment, there is an inflection of so much pain there. I think she never meant for things to happen between them, never planned it out, but rather was acting against what she knew was her best interest, avoiding a close friendship. As I said before, one cannot just turn love off, and I think Abby loved Owen, and that one "12 year old girl" side of her needed to be with him whether her logical "self interest" side really wanted to or not.

The only other thing I look at in retrospect is the "I knew you wouldn't let me". It seems rather confident for somebody who just said "I told you we couldn't be friends". But perhaps that was just her not giving up on this friendship, being determined in her own way, exhausting all resources to hold on to Owen, even her own life. But even so, I can only imagine a scared little girl stepping tentatively into Owen's apartment, whispering in her own mind trying to reassure herself "he won't let me die, he won't let me die"

[DavidZahir]

The only other thing I look at in retrospect is the "I knew you wouldn't let me". It seems rather confident for somebody who just said "I told you we couldn't be friends".

Excellent point. My own view is that of necessity Abby has learned to take chances--not as a matter of conscious decision but on the level of her nerves, her fingertips. That she takes such an extreme chance to win back Owen makes the case for just how lonely she is, and how much this young lad means to her. IMHO.