I went to Ireland for a month the summer I was 15. There was a group of French students our age, who’d arrived a week before. We took our classes with them and made friends pretty fast. One of my classmates was next door to me, the same house also had one of the French girls, C, whose boyfriend A was also in the group as well as his best friend N.
We were from two schools in nearby towns in Spain; our stay was being paid by our parents, the supervisor was one of the nuns from my school. They were there with the blessing of some program from French Social Services. Parents in jail, unknown father and whore mother, drugs at home. We wouldn’t have been able to believe the stories if they hadn’t been mentioned so matter-of-factly. Three of them were different. Two were better dressed and looked down their nose at everybody; the third was F.
F and A were twins. Their father was one of those artsy types who spend their lives living off women; the mother was a heiress who’d married him against her parents’ will. The divorce proceedings started before she’d even given birth to the boys and the judge, getting an attack of The Solomons, had given custody of A to the father, of F to the mother. Mom paid alimony to the father. Both boys had grown up being told their other parent was dead. A had been surprised to hear about the alimony; it was their only stable source of income, as a matter of fact. It should have been enough to pay for housing and a nice private school; you can bet that wasn’t what it got used for.
The classes were in three groups. F, who’d gone to the spiffiest schools, was in the highest level group. A, in the lowest, as was N. I said we all made friends pretty fast, didn’t I? We’d all be chatting together, either twin would be present, but if the other one appeared it was like the iceberg that sunk Titanic had been dropped on us. Like this for a whole week.
Finally N, who had a very sharp mind, came up with an idea. He convinced the twins to play a joke on us.
They both looked like Anthony Delon, but A had blue eyes and F, green. They wore identical medals: A on a short chain, F on a long one. Their clothing was different. So, N got them both in A’s jeans and boots with F’s shirts and pullovers; identical sunglasses. What to do about the accents? Well, F had no trouble at all copying his brother’s broken English 
and they just didn’t speak in French at all.
They drove everybody nuts all day long, but we were giggling too hard to care. The teachers would keep saying “this one isn’t mine!” (they probably could have said “just stop it you two” but ah, never underestimate the power of pride… N was somewhat of a conman, I sure hope he grew up to become a publicist or find some other legal use for his abilities).
It didn’t stop until we were leaving for lunch. Both of them tried to kiss C and she said “ah no, NO WAY! You two take those glasses off NOW! I kiss the one with blue eyes.”
Once the ice had been thoroughly shattered, they started comparing notes and found out how much they had in common. F had several years of piano; A had learned to play guitar from friends. Their favorite musicians were the same; they swapped tapes on those the other one hadn’t been familiar with. They were interested in many of the same subjects. Not only was F able to explain to A and N (C was a good student, at least by comparison) the “hows” of some of the school stuff they’d flunked repeatedly, but also “why” it’s important. He got some of us to explain ways in which our parents used some of the subjects we studied. Many of our dads used different kinds of math every day (accountant turned factory manager, banker, engineer); the only math A and F’s Dad used was substraction 
Never had their contact info, but I sure hope those four came out all right. Helluva people
