How do brothers, Erick and Pete, differ in the novel, Night Kites?

Erick is the cautious, conservative one in the family. Whereas Pete is the first one in the water, Erick is the last. He is only seventeen, but he seems much younger in that he is never really sure who or what he wants. When he does take a chance he does not think about hurting anyone; he is only interested in having a good time. He accepts Pete's homosexuality as just another way of being. Yet later he says that he thought he would have been the one to blot the family record.