Hi, I’m looking for a book I bought at a used book store in the early 90s. I think it was published in the late 80s. It was about a girl whose family moved to a beach town in California in the summer. When told to get out of the house to explore the town, she met a group of kids her age (12-15, I think). The other kids didn’t want anything to do with her at first, but she eventually befriended them. They spoke differently from everyone else, replacing words with their own alternate words (like ordering burgers with “cries” instead of onions); she translated the altered phrases for her friends when they were speaking to people outside their circle. When she started speaking like her friends, she started to lose herself and realized that something was wrong. In the end, she was able to save herself and her friends from whatever was taking away their senses of self. I thought the name of the book was “Starchild” or something like that, but “Starchild” is a different book. TIA for any help you all can provide.
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: Name That Book! 