Well, I can't necessarily help - but I can give my own experience as a former 13-year-old, who is now relatively socially satisfied.

13 sucks. It does get better. I was in 8th grade at a tiny rural school with no peers, really. My parents gave me a folder with a cartoon character on a mountaintop saying "It's lonely at the top." I'm sure the artist thought it was a boast, but I used to hug the folder and cry. The high school was a little bigger but no better in that way. I did find friends, if not folks that could keep up with me. I didn't have anyone close enough to consider dating them.

Things got much better in college. I lucked out - with no one around me to help me pick a top-end school, I still found one and went there. It was barely bigger than my high school, in undergrads, but *everyone* there was close enough to my level that I had *choices*. For the first time, I met people as far beyond me as I was beyond my high school honors classmates. And they were just as happy to meet me!

I met DH there, and we still have a group of 10-20 alum friends that we have a close community with - living in the same area and seeing each other weekly. Many more of our group are more loosely associated and come to holiday parties and such, or visit the whole group when they come from out of town. Our kids are growing up like cousins. No one showed us this model. We created it ourselves because it was important to us.

Among the many HG+ people I know now, the ones who were least isolated before college had been to summer talent search programs. Several had been to the same one, some to others, but I get the impression that which one it was mattered much less than the going. Some considered their camp friends their 'lifeline' during the school year, and kept correspondence relationships with them that still survive today.

While I realize that a summer camp may not be safe for your DD, and summer is far away in any case, how about an online course with a virtual classroom component and high entrance requirements, like CTY or EPGY/OHS? Friendship-by-skype could help a lot, if you can just find the right person for the connection. My kids are younger and less different from their neighbors, so I have no experience here, but it's certainly something I'd consider.

I hope things will look up soon.